pc quest nov 2007
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PC Quest - Leading IT Magazine.TRANSCRIPT
In this Issue
2 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
November 2007
C O V E R S T O R Y
Strategies for Healthy WANs62
Discussions and Support @http://forums.pcquest.com
[email protected] for magazine related [email protected] for CD related queries
Cover design: Venkatesulu V Reddy
The load on enterprise WAN links is gradually increas-
ing as more applications are getting added to them.
With more load comes more management headaches,
performance issues, security woes, etc. We look at these
key pain points and at what WAN managers can do to
alleviate them.
T E C H N O L O G Y
Want to know about the hottest wireless technologies,
how they work, and where all they’re being used? In
this article, we’ll update you on what’s happening in
all the hot wireless technologies, along with a few
interesting uses that they’re being put to.
30
Wireless: The Story So Far
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88
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96
H A N D S O N
110
E X T R A E D G EMicrosoft BizTalk RFID
The Ultimate Boot CD
Masking with Corel Photo-Paint
Optimize Your Virtual Machines
Spam Busting in Windows Vista
Add More Fire to Your Firefox
HTTP Fingerprinting Simplified
Linux Online Aware Taskbar
Add Liveliness to Web Pages with
Photoshop CS3
Using Explorer as Shell
D E V E L O P E R
Implementing Ajax with ZK
Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET Futures
Efficient Unit-testing in Java with AgitarOne
Block Offensive Language from Your Site
Query Style Programming with Orcas
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102
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105
106
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109
136
D O I T Y O U R S E L FRunning Linpack on Windows Compute
Cluster
content-nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 4:00 PM Page 4
4 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
In this Issue November 2007
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Bank on IT to Keep YourMoney Safe
V E R T I C A L F O C U S
Banking and financial services industry has been
at the forefront in adopting IT. Let’s identify issues
they face after having used IT, and what’s the way
forward. We bring inputs from CIOs of leading
banks and find out how they’re coping up with
new challenges.
14
76How to Keep Your Apps Healthy
E N T E R P R I S E S O L U T I O N S
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MojoPac Desktop Virtualization Software
Gnome 2.20
NetOP Remote Control 9.0
Extreme Networks Summit X250e-24P HP
ProCurve LAN-Edge Switches
Acer TravelMate 6292 Notebook
Asus W5Fe Notebook
Lenovo ThinkPad T61p Notebook
Dell Inspiron 1720 Notebook
Connoi FL91 Notebook
Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM
PurpleNova Pro
Buffalo TeraStation Live NAS
Asus P5K3 Deluxe Motherboard
Gigabyte P35-DQ6 Motherboard
ECS NF650iSLIT-A Motherboard
Books
R E V I E W S
Remote Application Streaming
Virtualization in Windows Server 2008
IIS 7: A Modular Approach
Linux Rescue Box
Keep an Eye on Your Code
Host Intrusion Detection with OSSEC
E N T E R P R I S E I M P L E M E N T A T I O N
PCQ Xtreme DVD(Dual layer 8.5 GB)includes Adobe FrameMaker8, Hot LinuxISOs: Linbox, Mandriva and Ubuntu Stu-dio, and top 5 games in Gaming Zone
PCQ Professional CDGet Free Health Checkup for Your Appswith 6 tools, 5 tools to develop active weband desktop apps, 13 Top Utilities, andWS_FTP home edition guide
E-m
ail: cdrompcquest@
cybermedia.co.in. Produced by CyberMedia Labs. Replicated in India by Softalk Technologies
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edia
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November 2007
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ail: cdrompcquest@
cybermedia.co.in. Produced by CyberMedia Labs. Replicated in India by Softalk Technologie
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November 2007
P C QP r o f e s s i o n a l
Developers’cornerDevelopers’corner
Home Edition
WS_FTP
Four exciting Microsoft releases
� Media Center Development Kit
� .NET 3.0 Framework
� Expression Web
� Expression Blend
Plus, get ZKoss 3.0 RC,
an Ajax framework
Ensure the best of health for your critical apps by closely monitoring their performance using this healthy bunch of 6 tools
Free Health Checkup for Your Apps
Free Health Checkup for Your Apps
UtilitiesUtilities
� Application Monitor 1
� Application Manager 1
� OpenBAM
Publish websites,
blogs, and podcasts
with ease
� Startup Application Manager
� ManageEngine 7
� StartWatch
13 Top13 Top
PCQuest Power Pack
T R E N D S
OOXML or ODF: Which One Will Survive? 38
You could implement the best application in the world,
but if it is not tuned to users’ requirements, it’s bound to
fail. The story will identify critical issues that affect app
performance, tools for monitoring and managing the
various apps, and their implementation
content-nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 4:00 PM Page 6
6 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
What would you do if you caught
an employee chatting with
friends on an instant messen-
ger? You’ll block it because it’s against com-
pany policy, chokes Internet bandwidth,
and wastes productive time. However, next
time, you’ll find another employee using
something else to interact with others, say
Orkut or blogging.You’ll block that also
only to find them using some other mecha-
nism to communicate, maybe a new P2P
application.
All these events don’t happen
overnight, as new social networking tech-
nologies take time to develop. But while
they develop, many other interesting things
also happen in the background.While IT
managers were busy banning Yahoo! Or
MSN Instant Messengers, somebody, some-
where was busy adding IM capabilities to a
Mail server for the same IT manager. Later,
the same IT manager who was blocking
IMs ends up deploying that mail server for
the enterprise for official use.
This is not a new trend. In fact, many
technologies we see being used in enter-
prises today were at one point of time criti-
cized or banned from use. I’m not saying
that organizations are following the wrong
practice. by banning such social network-
ing technologies.After all, such social net-
working technologies do cause disruption.
What’s important to realize here is that
many consumer driven technologies have
entered the enterprise world this way, and
revolutionized the face of IT; and more will
continue doing so in the future. The one
that’s hot off the platter today are social net-
working technologies, also called Web 2.0.
Most organizations today end up block-
ing Orkut or YouTube, the torch bearers of
Web 2.0 technologies, as they eat up pro-
ductivity and network bandwidth. But a lot
of enterprise software vendors have taken
queue from the concepts behind these sites
and introduced similar features within
their own products.
Take the latest versions of any collabo-
ration or messaging suite from any vendor
worth its name today, and you’ll find it to be
filled with Web 2.0 technologies.
Many other trends are also in the mak-
ing, which just might make it big. For a long
time, enterprises have been banning USB
drives from being used in the company due
to security reasons. But what if the same
USB drive could carry the entire desktop of
a user? This way, users could be more pro-
ductive on the move, without having to
carry laptops. That’s a trend more com-
monly known as desktop virtualization.
Likewise, most organizations block P2P
software, but today there are companies
busy creating new avatars of the same
‘menace’, which will be very beneficial for
organizations. How about file sharing or
web site hosting using a P2P software from
a PC, or downloading a new patch on one
machine and distributing it across?
So there are two sides to everything,
and we should also see the better side and
appreciate this spirit of innovation! �
Anil Chopra, Editor
Leading Edge
Editor-in-Chief: Shyam MalhotraChief Editor: Prasanto K Roy
Editor: Anil Chopra
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Swapnil Arora Technology Analysts: Rahul Gupta, Rahul Sah,
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Contributors: Vinod Unny,Shekhar Govindarajan
IT Correspondents: Jasmine Desai,Vishnu Anand
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The Spirit of Innovation
editorial_Nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 7:17 PM Page 6
8 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
During the past few months a new soft-
ware robot was in news, which could under-
stand jokes. Developed at the University of
Cincinnati, this 'bot' is a small example of so-
ciable computing. Its researchers say that
bots like this one can bring a sense of humor
to physical robots like Honda's ASIMO,
which can act as human companions.
This genre of robots are known as ‘Affec-
tive Systems’, but you’ll be surpirsed to know
that they have been around for decades.
These systens can recognize and respond to
human voice and display emotions such as
happiness, anger, etc. Similar to this was
Philips iCat, which was once the most talked
about commercial smart companion. Unfor-
tunately, it met with limited success, but it
could generate many facial expressions and
recognize objects and faces with a camera
installed on its head.
The best commercial robot I have ever
seen was Sony's AIBO. It could do all sorts of
things from checking email, obeying the
owner’s instructions to even playing football.
Sadly there weren’t many takers for it, and
Sony suffered huge losses.As a result, it went
out of production. Since then we haven’t
seen any appealing commercial AI robots.
Another robot considered to be emotion-
ally intelligent was developed at MIT some-
time back—the sociable humanoid known
as Kismet. For running it required 15 net-
worked computers, out of which nine ma-
chines were used to control its vision
processing, eyes, neck, etc. It was however
able to figure out human emotions and re-
quired a caretaker to learn new things.
As I was about to write this, I saw an-
other piece of news that said that in the fu-
ture, marriages between humans and robots
(androids) would also be possible and AI
would be used to ensure they both under-
stand each other. Not much information
about this is available and whether re-
searchers have done anything more practical
on this or not is still a matter of speculation.
The worst part is that researchers themselves
don’t understand why a human would like to
do something like this.Well, I would like to
ask them why are they wasting time on this
research if they don’t know what it’s for. I
mean they could spend all their precious re-
sources in solving some of the real problems
in the world.
God knows what future is going to shape
up to be, but something like this at this mo-
ment definitely seems odd, especially when
even a decent usable commercial AI robot
seems far away from reality. It’s been long
said that robots will be able to learn emo-
tions from humans, both right and wrong.As
this Emotional Intelligence evolves further,
robots could even learn to fake their emo-
tions and things could possibly go on as far
you can stretch your imagination.All said
and done, most of this area remains in re-
search, so it seems like it’ll gonna be a while
before smart companion becomes a reality.
Lastly, our Technology expert, Sanjay
Majumder, has moved on within the organi-
zation. I wish him all the best for future.
We’re gonna miss you Sanju! �
This Issue
AI and EI: Have they Finally Arrived?
Swapnil AroraIssue Editor for this month
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editorial_nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 7:29 PM Page 8
PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 710 A CYBERMEDIA Publication
II ttrriieedd ttoo ssttaarrtt wweebbmmiinn,, bbuuttccoouulldd nnoott iinn PPCCQQ LLiinnuuxx 22000077.. II bbee--lliieevvee iitt iiss nnoott iinncclluuddeedd iinn tthhee DDeesskk--ttoopp ooppttiioonn.. SSoo,, II ddoowwnnllooaaddeedd iittffrroomm wweebbmmiinn aanndd iinnssttaalllleedd iitt,, bbuuttssttiillll ccoouulldd nnoott ssttaarrtt iitt.. II sseeaarrcchheedd
PPCCQQ22kk77 ffoorruumm bbuutt ddiidd nnoott ffiinndd aannyyppoosstt oonn tthhiiss ttooppiicc
bbhhiiddee__vviijjuu oonn PPCCQQffoorruummssPPCCQQuueesstt:: Login as ‘root’ and run‘/etc/webmin/start’, this will startwebmin manually. Now, open a
browser and go to https://local-host:10000. Here, you should beable to see the webmin console.By default administration loginname of webmin is ‘root’ and password is your current root password.
II aamm iinn nneeeedd ooff aa ggaatteewwaayy lleevveell ssoolluuttiioonn ffoorr mmoonniittoorriinngg
oouuttggooiinngg iinnffoorrmmaattiioonn lleeaakkaaggeeddeetteeccttiioonn aanndd eemmaaiill mmoonniittoorriinnggppuurrppoosseess.. IIss iitt ppoossssiibbllee ttoo hhoollddoouuttggooiinngg eemmaaiillss tteemmppoorraarriillyy aannddhhaavvee tthheemm rreevviieewweedd bbyy aannaaddmmiinniissttrraattoorr bbeeffoorree ddeelliivveerryy??PPlleeaassee ssuuggggeesstt wwhhaatt sshhoouulldd II ddoo??
BB..NN JJaammeessPPCCQQuueesstt:: Information leakage pre-vention is a growing concern forall enterprises as conventionalUTMs and firewalls don’t solvethis problem. If you are looking fora software level solution, then lookat something like WebSense Con-tent Protection Suite. It lets youprotect data with policy level con-trols, and monitor data traveling inand out of the enterprise. Another
MESSAGE BOARDW H A T Y O U H A V E T O S A Y
I have been a PCQuest reader for the last 10 years. Itis with great interest that I read the VerticalFocus–Education in your October 2007 issue, particu-larly the part on ‘Exams via Linux in Kerala’. I havealso implemented a similar solution with a few morefeatures, using Apache, MySQL, and PHP for aMaritime academy in Goa. Using its database, theexaminer can immediately get results in variousforms—general marklist, detailed general marklistwhere a student’s marks in each topic are shown along
with the answer sheet. This database also maintains details ofeach student and allows you to edit them. jjddssggooaa oonn PPCCQQffoorruumm
I work with the branch of a big group. Since, we’ve have juststarted, our LAN setup acts as a work group under the main
group. We have a separate Internet broadband connection. The ISP'srouter is connected with a switch and then broadcasted to all users.We have an application server which runs our main applications,with server 2005 at backend. Now, I want to add a Web module to myapplication which will communicate with sqldatabase for retriev-ing and storing data. I have registered for a public IP from my ISP toconfigure my application server. I have purchased a hardware fire-wall (hclinfowall ) and want to install it, so that Web server could ac-cess only my sql database. How and where should I install it?
RReesshhjjkkrruusshh oonn PPCCQQffoorruummssPPCCQQuueesstt:: As you alreadyhave a firewall, you just haveto give a local IP to both yourWeb and SQL servers andmake them talk to eachother. Give the Public IP tothe Firewall and do port for-warding for port 80 to the local IP of the Web server, as shown in diagram.
Exams Via Linux in Kerala
msg board_final.qxp 10/24/2007 2:32 PM Page 13
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IT has extended the business of banking toevery conceivable channel be it Internet, ATMs,mobiles and now even trains! Soon you wouldbe spared the pain of safekeeping multiple PINsand passwords through Biometrics. All thiscomes with its own set of challenges. Read on tofind out about those challenges, and how banksare finding innovative ways to resolve themAdeesh Sharma, Vishnu Anand and Jasmine Desai
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:35 PM Page 1
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Given the frenetic pace of life, we’re all hard-pressed for time and energy to take care ofour critical tasks. And most of these in-
evitably require transacting money in one form or theother. A growing economy and the associated perilsof inflation together ensure that banking and finan-cial transactions increase in volumes with each pass-ing day. Just do a quick rehash of where you dependon banks to fulfill daily needs and you’ll know. Cashwithdrawals or deposits, utility bills (electricity, mo-biles, landlines), corporation taxes, income-tax, ad-vance tax, transfer of funds across accounts, fixeddeposits, share trading and so on. How do you taketime off your busy professional schedule to visit thebank and carry these out? Thankfully, it’s the otherway round. The trend among banks and financialservices companies has been to leverage IT to go totheir customers instead of the other way around.That’s why one can see banks introducing so manychannels for reaching out to their customers, likephone banking, SMS banking, online banking,ATMs, credit cards, debit cards and so on.
This sounds really impressive because bankshave to use IT extensively to make it happen. But, itcomes with its own set of challenges, which the CIOsof banks have to cope up with. One key concern is en-suring security of all these channels. More channelsmeans more number of ports opening up. Plus, thesecurity of transactions through these channels alsohas to be ensured. The other key challenge is integra-tion of various applications and their data. Every banktoday is trying to offer a host of services to customers.So apart from bank accounts, a bank today also offersloans, investment options, credit cards, etc. There arehigh chances that some of the customers are com-mon across these applications. However, since theseapplications have grown separately, integrating themtogether to offer cross sell opportunities is a majorchallenge. It’s a real challenge in front of banks to uti-lize information generated through one applicationfor servicing the same customer for another applica-tion. Simply count the number of times you get callsfrom the same bank, each time trying to sell someproduct/service or the other but completely oblivi-ous of the fact that you might already be their exist-ing customer and therefore would expect the callerto have done his homework properly and not ��
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:35 PM Page 56
16 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
bother you for basic information such as address,email, age, etc.
Sadly, this is seldom the case and more often thannot you have to bear unwarranted calls from one bankor the other. So, clearly banks have a challenge here.To integrate data across different banking applica-tions so that agents manning various bank channelsknow before hand whether a customer they’re callingis already a customer or not.
Another challenge before banks is to tap the vastmarket of rural customers. In fact, this is one area thatremains neglected because of inadequate civic andtelecom infrastructure. May be it is time for banks togo beyond traditional solutions and look at some ofinnovative ones. One such alternative is the use bio-metric technologies in offering banking services tofar-flung areas. In this story we explore the solutionsto all these challenges and see what Indian bankshave already done to alleviate those.
WWhheerree IITT ccoommeess ttoo tthhee rreessccuuee For a start, banks need to have centralized infrastruc-ture not only for their branches but also for the differ-ent channels. This would ensure common access tocustomer information for users across different chan-nels. The same pool of information could be used tosolicit new products and services to old and new cus-tomers alike and at the same time provide an efficientmanagement information system (MIS) to the salesteams to generate leads from.
One strong solution to such integration chal-lenges can be SOA or Services Oriented Architec-ture. It could help banks ensure that their variousapplications are able to connect with each other with-out writing any proprietary code, or tampering withthe individual databases. There’s tremendous scopefor banks to utilize SOA for this job. In fact, it couldeven be used to integrate their banking applicationswith the various communication channels.
On the security front, there are several solutions be-ing worked out by banks. One of course would be todeploy a complete information security solution that isable to secure all applications and channels of entry.As an example of how security across various channelscan be enhanced, let’s take a quick peek at how SMSbanking can be used to make and receive paymentsfrom third parties such as merchant establishments.
A buyer sends a message for buying and the bankin turn sends a message confirming the purchase toboth the merchant as well as the buyer. Debit cardnumber is the key field which is used for the authen-ticity of the customer. Security for transactions tak-ing place through this channel is ensured in twostages. First your mobile number is authenticated bythe bank through the use of authentication keys.Next, a customer enters a secret Mobile PersonalIdentification Number (MPIN). This needs to beagain authenticated by the bank. As an enhanced se-curity measure, access is denied after three invalid login attempts.
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HSBC introduced the first ATM in India in 1987.ICICI, UTI, HDFC and IDBI together count for morethan 50% of the total ATMs in India. But SBI pipsthem all in reaching out to the remotest of customers,with ATM machines in the smallest of towns andcities. After SBI, The Corporation Bank has the secondlargest network of ATMs amongst nationalized banks.Most of the banks are entering into tie-ups with otherbanks to fast-forward their ATM deployment. For anominal fee, which depends on the scheme that abank offers and the facilities you choose, customerscan enjoy the same benefits as they do from theirbank’s own ATM. All information and transactions are
routed among member institutions through a networkswitch. This switch transmits the information to thebank which has issued the card, which in turnapproves or declines the transaction request and noti-fies the switch. The decision of the card-issuing bankis then routed by the switch to the processor of theATM, which completes the transaction. The accountbalances of member banks are sent at the end of theday. It takes approximately Rs 10 lakhs to set up anATM center. Rs 12-14 lakhs per annum are needed forits maintenance. To keep the cost in equilibrium posi-tion, there should be around 250-300 transactions perday per ATM.
��
ATMs:A quick rewind
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/24/2007 12:46 PM Page 57
How would you rate the adoption of IT by your bank and
what according to you are the pain areas?
The problem related to IT adoption is two-fold. For one, we
have to face demands from suppliers and secondly, the staff
needs to get adjusted to the latest technology. A vendor can
only provide you with a solution, give you the connectivity
and links, but it is upto you to utilize it for business develop-
ment. The growth rate in banking is extremely high and IT
industry at times fails to deliver. For eg, nowadays we talk of
opening 50 branches in a single day. For that, we need hard-
ware and connectivity. IT industry due to physical and capaci-
ty constraints fails to provide connectivity in certain places.
When a rural branch is included in Core Banking System
(CBS) and if any of the connectivity links goes down, it
becomes a serious issue.
What steps have you taken to ensure faster services to
customers?
Our processes have been re-engi-
neered so that services get priority
rather than the background
processes. For eg, we have adopt-
ed an application called Universal
Tailor which will dispose
cash payment from
the storage disk
itself, shortening
the time of
the original
process.
The signature of the customer is made available to the cashier
through technology. Customers can also open new accounts
with us through Internet and come to the bank just once to
sign documents.
How do you alleviate security concerns at your as well as
customer’s end?
We have a very elaborate system for security. However, one
cannot remain static on security. It always needs to be
upgraded. We regularly do “Penetration Test” wherein some
people from outside with our permission are allowed to test
the vulnerability of our system. In the datacenters, everyday a
report is generated and reviewed to check whether there was
an attempt to hack the system. To ensure identity of a cus-
tomer, the most common way is an ID and a password. We are
also adopting biometrics wherein through a thumb impres-
sion or colour of the eye the authenticity of the person is rec-
ognized. This would be especially useful in rural areas.
How do you plan to expand your reach in rural areas?
We are very keen on expanding in rural areas as more than 40
per cent of our business comes from there. Unfortunately, IT
has failed in providing connectivity in many remote areas.
There are business considerations involved while building
infrastructure in these remote areas. All branches have to be
brought on a common platform with similar technology. To
resolve connectivity issues we tied up with a radio link
provider to provide us connectivity through radio links.
18 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
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A case for biometric authentication The banking sector has been very lousy in adoptingbiometrics for the mass consumer, as people used toperceive sharing details of their anatomies as analo-gous to criminal investigation. But with a lot ofthought being given to innovation throughout theBFS, the technology is finding many takers now.However, in rural areas, with literacy rates still belowacceptable levels, people have been pragmatic to-ward this technology. We believe anything thatmakes for a simpler interface and saves you from thehassles of maintaining mu`ltiple passwords or PINsis a welcome step. It is after all an automated tech-
nique for establishing identity through unique phys-iological or behavioral characteristics.
Finger scanning is still the most popular applicationof biometrics in automated teller machines. By plug-ging a portable scanning device into the back of theATM, any ATM machine can be enhanced to offer thisfunctionality. This machine in turn connects to thebank's server, which authenticates the visitor by com-paring with stored records. It’s an unequivocal way ofestablishing the identity of the person and one that can’tbe breached by intruders. And not just ATMs, biomet-rics can also be used to restrict access to sensitive areasin banks such as locker rooms and data centers. ��
K Asawa
DGM, IT - Bank of Baroda
We regularly do ‘Penetration Tests,’wherein people from outside are allowed
to test the vulnerability of our system“”
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:36 PM Page 58
What makes a biometric trait stand apart is that itis as unique as the individual from whom it was cre-ated. So unlike a password or PIN, a biometric traitcannot be lost, stolen, or recreated. This makes theuse of biometrics a sure enough remedy to preventidentity theft, a problem that is mushrooming along-side databases of personal information. In fact, someof the channels for monetary transactions such ascredit cards are a very good candidate for applicationof biometrics on the consumer side. More so, as theyget smarter and develop capabilities to store moreand more personal details on an RFID chip. Apartfrom the account information and other personal de-tails, information pertaining to the biometric traits ofan individual can also be bolted inside. Technologyexperts aver that a digital fingerprint will eventuallyprove cheaper to incorporate for banks than any ofthe keyboard-based encrypted solutions as thebiggest issue with PIN based access remains its vul-nerability to hackers after it has been keyed in by theuser and before it gets to the card reader.
Beyond finger scans Finger-based scans are just one of the multitude ofoptions that biometrics based authentication tech-nologies offer. There are other options such as
matching hand geometry to retina scans to iris scansand so on. Authentication can also be done based onquasi-behavioral attributes such as a person’s voice,handwriting, etc. Yet another is facial recognition,where a person's face is stored digitally and for eachtransaction, the live image of the person is comparedto the one stored in the database and co-related to hisaccount number. Hand geometry based systems arenot easy to implement though as their parameterschange with external factors such as weather condi-tions, cleanliness of hands, etc. Likewise, retina scansneed perfect alignment of the eye to reach the retinaat the back of the eye; a time consuming activity inpopulated areas. Iris scans are marginally better asthey do not require contact between the customer’seye and the biometric device to correlate the eye'scolored area (ie, the iris). Voice recognition at pres-ent seems the easiest of all biometric techniques asvoice can even be authenticated sitting at homethrough your phone. A survey conducted backs thisclaims saying that 95% of consumers prefer voice ver-ification compared with the 80% that are willing to ac-cept fingerprint scans. As mentioned earlier, voiceeven works remotely (by phone) whereas con-sumer’s need to install special fingerprint readersat their premises to be able to get themselves au-
20 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Last month, a village near Bangalore called Devanahalli,was chosen by Canara Bank to feature the first-ever
biometric ATM in the country. Besides performing thefunctions of a regular ATM, it captures the fingerprints ofcustomers that would be transferred to the central serverthrough a CDMA phone. Thus a customer is authenticatedthrough his fingerprints instead of the four-digit pin. Sincethe initiative is targeted at rural users, a pre-recorded voicesystem in the appropriate regional language is included toguide the customer. In the first stage of its financial inclu-sion project, Canara Bank has opened 6 lakh ‘no-frills’accounts spread across 1639 villages all over the country,and hopes to increase this figure to 10 lakh by the end ofthis fiscal. These no-frills accounts go back to the verybasics of banking and allow deposits, withdrawals andaccount balance enquiries. The key here is the fact thathuman interaction with equipment or technology is done
in the local language, and to overcome resistance to tech-nology, voice, and not text is used as the primary mode ofcommunication.As part of its next pilot program, CanaraBank plans to equip villagers of Leisure and Kuluvanahallipockets of Karnataka with smartcards and soon spread itsreach across the country. The bank also uses fingerprintscanning to safeguard account details that are stored in anRFID chip. It has gone a step further and introducing whatit calls the ‘Mobile ATM’. This is essentially a van thathouses a toned down version of the ATM, powered by highcapacity batteries. The van would travel around villages,and be stationed at particular spots on definite days of themonth.Villagers who have no-frills account can enter thevan, scan their fingerprints and perform transactions.Assoon as the transaction is complete, the details would berecorded in a mobile phone and at the end of every ‘ses-sion’, the details would be uploaded to the central server.
��
Biometric banking@Canara Bank
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22 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
thenticated online. But before this all is well acceptedand practiced, technical standards need to be estab-lished so that biometrics work universally. Work isin progress with a lot of ATM vendors pitching in withtheir devices, and we expect some action sooner thanlater in this space.
Micro-banking in rural areasWe have seen how biometric authentication can pro-vide a secure and remotely accessible channel forbank customers and how it can come in handy forbanks while servicing rural populace. Let’s now lookat some other initiatives taken by banks for the ruralsector. Rural banking is one area where political pres-sures play their part. One significant challenge forbanks while providing services to rural customers isthe change in government policies for agriculturistsand the related thrust on farm credit. However, tech-nologically their efforts depend on the availability oftelecom infrastructure. The silver lining here is thecontinued downward spiral in the prices of telecomproducts over the past few years. This trend is likelyto continue and is in alignment with the increasingdemand for networking backbone. This is great newsfor all customers, more so banks who are alwayslarge consumers of bandwidth. The reduced band-width costs mean that banks can get their far-flungbranches networked at far lower costs than was thecase earlier. This would also create redundancy andin turn greater resilience for their networks.
A combination of two technologies – RFID andNear Field Communication (NFC) – is all set to en-able the rural population of the country to performessential banking transactions. NXP Semiconduc-tors, founded by Philips, that co-invented the NFCtechnology has partnered with A Little World, inven-tors of a mobile platform for inclusive banking, havetried the concept of micro-banking in over 450 vil-lages across four states of the country. The technol-ogy involves setting up of Customer Service Pointsequipped with state-of-the-art mobile phones thatsupport NFC. Each villager who is an accountholder, will be given a biometric-enabled RFIDsmartcard, which will communicate with the mobilephone at the Customer Service Point. The smartcardessentially contains information about identity of thecustomer such as name, address, photograph, fin-gerprint templates and relevant details of the savingsor loan accounts held by the issuing bank. NFC, be-ing a short-range wireless connectivity technologyenables secure exchange of data between two de-vices, by just placing them together, pretty muchlike how Bluetooth functions. Since NFC effectivelycombines contactless identification and networkingtechnologies, it can communicate between an RFIDcard and an NFC mobile phone, or if required, be-tween two NFC devices. Currently, the NFC-enabledmobile phones used in this project are sourced fromMotorola and Nokia.
The NFC works on the concept of magnetic fieldinduction, and operates within theunlicensed radio frequency band of13.56MHz. Speeds can vary between106 Kbit/s, 212 Kbit/s and 424Kbit/s. It is an open platform tech-nology standardized in ECMA-340and operates with both the ‘active’and ‘passive’ modes of RFID. Duringits pilot run, Uttarakhand, Mizoram,Meghalaya and Andhra Pradeshhave been covered, and banks likeState bank of India, Union Bank, AxisBank, Andhra bank and the AndhraPradesh Grameen Bank have collab-orated with the project. In theWarangal district of AP, social se-curity pensioners were given their
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��
A biometric-enabled RFID smartcard containing fingerprint scans communicates
with the mobile phone at the bank using ‘Near Field Communication’
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:36 PM Page 60
payments using Micro-banking, and in places likeAizwal in Mizoram and Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand,the project introduced the concept of banking, sincethese areas have never had a bank before. Interest-ingly, the RFID cards used for the initiative were tai-lored around a completely different application.These cards are currently used in about 35 countriesincluding Singapore, the US, and the UK, on theirnewly issued e-passports. The RFID chips are em-bedded in the passports, and are aimed at reducing
paperwork and making the passport data tamper-proof. For the NFC initiative however, it is designedto eliminate the cost and effort to set up physicalbranches in rural areas, and providing services rang-ing from cash deposits, cash withdrawals, utility pay-ments, and money transfers.
Passengers, Goods and... ATMs on TrainsYou’ve seen mobile ATM vans across cities and ru-ral areas. But how about ATMs on railways---the ul-
24 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
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With the entry of large foreign banks in the Indianbanking arena in 2009, Indian banks with their
relatively small sizes will be forced to consolidate to takethe increased competition head-on. Indian bankingindustry today faces unprecedented challenges (customeracquisition and retention, reducing costs of transactions,risk management, and regulatory compliance) to sustaintheir growth path. To leverage the opportunities present(and created) and the challenges tickling the industry,the sector is increasingly getting exposed to informationtechnology. Effective use of technology has dramaticallyimproved the efficiency of sector's operations, which hasled to increased productivity and profitability.
According to the IDC report titled India BFSI SectorIT Usage and Trends 2007-2011 Forecast and Analysis,the IT market in the Indian banking sector is forecastedto grow at CAGR of 13.0% for the period of 2006-2011.The key IT segments in the Indian banking industrywould be the Packaged Software, PCs, Mid-range Serversand Networking Equipment. The IT deploymentsin the banks will not only act as a facilitator forfurther expansion but will also help the banks indealing with the issues of storage, security, under-standing customer informatics and regulatorycompliances. Banks are increasingly becomingtechnology-intensive and are looking to leverageIT to meet the exponentially increasing consumerdemands in terms of cost, efficiency, convenienceand reliability. The banks in India are looking toprovide Web-based trade support, real-time grosssettlement, online tax accounting system, value-added transaction services and basic online trans-
action services, to attract and retain customers. The keyIT solutions being targeted by the Indian banking indus-try are networking, customer relationship management,business intelligence, Internet banking and storage andsecurity solutions. By leveraging IT the banks are lookingto develop alternative delivery channels such as ATMs,tele-banking, and Mobile banking. Thus IT is playing avery crucial role in bringing the banking sector to its realworth and is focusing more on customer convenienceand development of banking habits among all. Also thebanking system will become transparent in its dealingsand will adopt global best practices in accounting anddisclosures driven by the motto of value enhancement forall the stakeholders involved. Technology would make theflow of information much faster, more accurate andenable quicker analysis of data received. Therefore theconventional definition of banking will make way for themore tech-enabled banking; all because of increased ITorientation of the Indian banking industry.
Increasing IT Orientation of the Indian Banking IndustryS
ca
lin
g u
p o
f IT
In
fra
str
uc
ture
1960s 1980s 1990s 2004s 2008s 2011s
Punch Card
Equipments
Branch
Automation
Branch Networking,
Total Bank Automation
and ATMs
CRM, RTGS
and Core
Banking
Data
Warehousing and
Consolidation
and BPM
BASEL II Compliance,
Innovation, Product
Bundling, Anti-Money
Laundering
��
Parishesh Mishra and Arpan Gupta, Industry Verticals Research Practice, IDC India
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:37 PM Page 61
26 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
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timate mobility solution. Close on the heels of settingup of ATMs on railway platforms, the governmenthas given permission to banks to set up ATMs ontrains! And why not, with the progress in telecommu-nications such as improved VSAT and microwavelinks, technology has become a key enabler for set-ting this infrastructure. Right now, there are morethan 1800 ATMs on railway platforms across India.Most of these are placed in the bigger and more pop-ular stations in metros, which is logical as these sta-tions see enormous number of passengerscommuting on a daily basis. Having ATMs on trainswould help passengers coming from the smaller
cities and towns, where the infrastructure to estab-lish ATMs or other such mobile banking solutions iseither simply non-existent or proves pretty expen-sive. Plus, there are security concerns. In fact, a long-distance train could act as the fastest and longestmobile carrier of ATMs across this vast country. Thiswould also ensure safety of passengers as they neednot carry large sums of cash during journey. Insteadthey can withdraw money as and when required.This facility can further be enhanced by installing e-ticketing kiosks alongside the ATMs. This means apassenger can withdraw money and buy rail ticketsat the same place!
Being the largest bank in the country what challenges you
face and how can IT help overcome those?
There are two immediate challenges—the bank’s size and its
geographical reach. IT is helping us in handling banking vol-
umes, amount of transactions and accounts. There are 100
million accounts in the system and over 20 million transac-
tions in a day. In three years time, we plan to grow about five
times this volume and without IT infrastructure it is not possi-
ble. There has to be similar IT infrastructure across all branch-
es. However, IT infrastructure deficiency is the main challenge.
What are the key technologies/solutions that you are using
to speed up internal process across branches?
We are trying to reduce footfalls in our transits by providing
alternative channels to people. Right now around 20 lakh
transactions take place through these channels. Currently we
have 11,000 branches and 7,000 ATMs. To enable a smooth
communication amongst various branches we have set up our
own network using various technologies such as CDMA,VSAT
and radio frequency.
How do you ensure security from your as well as cus-
tomer’s end?
There are two levels of security. One is manual security for
identity protection and the other is system security. SBI was
the first bank to come up with a document called security poli-
cy of bank. Even for networking the security policy is
deployed.When a message is moved from the branch to the
datacenter, it is encrypted. Even if someone intercepts it, he
will not be able to crack the code. Even for other transactions
bank has come up with documented security policy, which is
followed meticulously. There are regular audits carried out to
check the security of the system.We have ISO certificates for
our datacenters. In the datacenters, nobody has access to data.
On our website password is not asked. So we issue a warning
that if someone I asking the password do not mention.We are
looking at biometrics in ATM.
How does SBI use technology to serve rural customers?
We have 6600 rural branches.We have put most of them on
core banking. The last phase of connectivity should be com-
pleted by March.We use VSAT in such remote areas. The ques-
tion is not of connectivity alone. I have to service
them later on. The issue in rural
areas is, that there are hardly any
private players giving connec-
tivity.We are planning to
move to banking through
mobile sets, as mobile pene-
tration is good in these areas.
We are also looking at kiosk
banking or setting up a PC
wherein a person can look after it
and operate it.We have mobile
ATMs, which go from place
to place.We also have
mobile VSATs.
�
S K Sehgal
GM, IT - State Bank of India
In rural areas we plan to move to banking through mobile sets,as mobile penetration is good“
”
it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:38 PM Page 62
Technology
It’s long since we’ve been talking
about wireless technologies through
our articles and with the passage of
time we’ve seen how these technologies
have evolved. Today, these technologies
have matured to such an extent that
they’ve ceased to remain just a product
or a technology but are influencing
our lives in a big way. Our future no
doubt lies in a wireless world and in this
article we’ll see how wireless devices
influence our official, personal and so-
cial Lives, and the technologies behind
all this.
VoWLAN in enterprisesFor today’s enterprises, the biggest chal-
lenge is to contact the right person at the
right time through the right medium.
This is of course is not the core objective
of wireless but a very important applica-
tion nonetheless. The most prominent
technology that we have see in this arena
is VoWLAN.The technology is not rocket
science or something that has just come
out of research labs but is essentially two
technologies coupled with each other.
‘Vo’ stands for Voice and WLAN for WiFi.
This means voice over standard WiFi
links.
30 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Anindya Roy, Jasmine Desai, with inputs from Shashwat Chaturvedi
��
From short range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, ZigBee and RFID to metropolitan area technologies such as WiMax and VoWLAN, there’s not a single moment in life when we are not touched bythese.What’s more they’re even protecting wild life. Let’s explore the enchanting world of wireless
technology-wireless.qxp 10/24/2007 5:11 PM Page 30
hope that with stronger security mecha-
nisms in place, we’ll see more deploy-
ments based on WiMAX in future.
RFID in enterprisesWe’re no strangers to this technology that
already has made such a huge impact. Its
applications are enormous for enter-
prises.And has been further accentuated
by its adoption and development by gi-
ants such as Microsoft.Recently the com-
pany launched Biztalk RFID that allows
users to incorporate RFID into various
applications and workflows. Microsoft
has used a new software layer approach
that allows all kind of RFID devices, be it
a current RFID device, a previous gener-
ation device or next-generation sensors
and Electronic Product Code (EPC) read-
ers to be incorporated, in a plug and play
manner.From a developer’s point of view,
such a unique event processing engine
helps in creating, deploying and manag-
ing end to end logical RFID processes
that are independent of device type and
device communication protocols. The
best part of BizTalk RFID is that it can be
integrated with the current line of busi-
ness applications such as Enterprise Re-
source Planning (ERP) systems, Ware-
house Management Systems (WMS), etc.
The best part is that for such an integra-
tion no major modifications are re-
quired; it works automatically. You can
read more details on MS BizTalk RFID on
pg 136 in our Extraedge section.
Social Impact of RadioTelemetry and GISThe battle between poachers and tigers
has continued since ages. Technology
can help save the tiger in a big way, start-
ing right from investigation to prosecu-
tion. Data available at the Project Tiger
Directorate indicates that out of 173
deaths of tigers during 1999-2004, 83
were caused by poaching. You’ll be sur-
prised to know that poachers use sophis-
ticated communication devices such as
wireless sets, UHB Radio, and even Ham
radio for tracking tigers. Tiger reserves
on the contrary are not equipped with
adequate means of communication to
counter illegal activities. Radio teleme-
try can be used to track a lion or a tiger.
Here, a tiger is tranquilized and a collar
containing a radio antenna is put across
his neck. A researcher armed with a re-
ceiver can easily track a tiger with the aid
of radio telemetry.
Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) is another tool to track the move-
ment of various animals and birds such
as Siberian cranes.The radio collars have
a small GPS attachment that can be pro-
grammed to switch on at specific times
in during a day. These GPS devices then
search for the nearest satellites and once
a connection has been established, you
can easily fix the location of the animal.
The unit switches off by itself and trans-
mits data to handheld devices which can
be transferred on to a GIS.In India,WWF
is using GPS to track elephants in Assam
by following elephant herds, or using
secondary indicators of elephant move-
32 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Technology
Saving tigers from poachers: Radio telemetry can be used to track a tiger in the wild. Here, a collar containing a radio transmitter
is put around the wild cat’s neck. Wildlife officials armed with a receiver can easily keep track of the tiger’s movements
Fring is a simple, freely available tool
that lets you call any GSM, VoWLAN or
Messenger with your Windows Mobile
��
Technology-wireless.qxp 10/24/2007 5:05 PM Page 32
rates and are also power-constrained.Zig-
Bee promises a completely networked
home where all devices are able to com-
municate and be controlled by a single
unit.Imagine a home with different enter-
tainment units, various security systems
like fire and intrusion protections, air-
conditioners and other appliances that
have embedded applications supporting
ZigBee and through a single unit all these
devices could be accessed and controlled.
And as this device is going to consume low
power, it will have extended battery usage
life. You can think of similar home-office
scenarios, as well.
Personal applications of BluetoothYes it’s old. But that reaffirms the old
adage, which says ‘the old is gold’. With
the advent of Bluetooth, we first heard
the concept of a PAN (Personal Area Net-
work). Now, the network has become
more sophisticated and we call it a HAN
(Home Area Network). The applications
based on Bluetooth standards are grad-
ually coming in the market, further
boosting such networking concepts.
Now we have a car stereo system which
comes integrated with Bluetooth, so that
you one can directly stream your music
files stored in phones to the car stereo
system. Not only that, the car stereo gets
mute when a call comes to the phone.
But trust me this is not going to end up
in the car stereos. We are seeing software
and infrastructures that can integrate all
your digital lifestyle systems over the
Bluetooth to update your proximity and
presence in an intelligent system environ-
ment. Bluetooth being a small distance
communication channel gives the flexibil-
ity to devices kept in a room to sense that
someone is entering the room and the per-
son can also be identified.All this can hap-
pen by the Bluetooth connection of the
person’s phone. So, if you want to hide
yourself from your manager,you just have
to keep your mobile’s Bluetooth connec-
tivity off!
Coming back to the waiting area,once a
visitor enters the waiting area of your office
you can greet him, simply by setting some
messages,as soon as your Bluetooth system
detects his arrival.Or for that matter as your
friend enters your car,the car starts playing
music of her choice. Start her favorite TV
channel,etc.Not only this,when a phone call
comes to any mobile in the car, the celebra-
tion goes to mute. Once the call is over, the
device again tunes back to normal.
No,this is not the future or science fic-
tion. This is possible today and that too at
an affordable price. You can try out the
SmartHome project from LinuxMCE at
http://linuxmce.com/ for more details
about such devices and applications. You
can even buy such readymade products
and solutions from a company called
IPTriplePlay. The name of the solution
is Pluto. You can see a nice flash
video demo of such a smart home at
http://www.iptp.net/showflash_en.html.
These are only a few names but trust me
there are a handful of vendors and prod-
ucts in the market, and their tribe is
growing fast.
36 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Technology
�
Using a mobile phone you can control all electric equipment such as ACs, geysers,
TVs, etc wirelessly using Bluetooth
A car stereo integrated with Bluetooth.You can directly stream music files from any
Bluetooth mobile device and enjoy your favorite music while driving
Sourc
e:
iptp
.com
technology-wireless.qxp 10/24/2007 5:19 PM Page 36
Trends
Even as the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD bat-
tle is heading to its logical conclu-
sion (of co-existence or the lack of
it), another format war has reached its
crescendo – the war of office suite for-
mats. Microsoft recently approached the
International Standards Organization
(ISO) for a fast-track decision on the
adoption of its format, which is used by
Office 2007, as a certified global format.
ISO, which has already ratified the Open
Document Format (ODF) as a standard,
announced on September 5th that Mi-
crosoft’s format, the Open Office XML
(OOXML) failed to get a ‘resounding yes’
from its panel consisting of technology
companies and all the UN member
nations.
Wait and watchThe final ratification of OOXML as a stan-
dard by the ISO will now have to wait till
February next year,when the ISO will hold
a ballot resolution meeting and Microsoft
will be asked to address and counter the
concerns, apprehensions and brickbats
put forward by various participating
countries. In other words, Microsoft has
about six months to beef up the OOXML
format to suit international standards and
gather more support.
Microsoft has already started its en-
deavor to mend the biggest flaw of
OOXML– interoperability. It has under-
taken to beef up its partnership with ven-
dors to tackle interoperability issues in
design, technology and standardization.
It has also announced a continuing col-
laboration with AOL and Yahoo! for in-
stant messaging, and Novell for virtual-
ization applications, besides the creation
of what it calls the Interoperability Vendor
Alliance. But its biggest achievement in
this regard is said to be the successful de-
ployment of what it calls the Open XML
Translator, essentially a combination of
tools that allow translation between ODF
based applications and OOXML formats,
the source code for which is available un-
der what is called a BSD license. Having
got its roots from Berkeley Software Dis-
tribution,BSD represents a family of free-
for-use software licenses worldwide.
Divided supportersWhile HP, Intel, EMC, Sony Electronics,
Apple and Lexmark International have
come out strongly in support of Microsoft,
Oracle and IBM continue to support ODF.
Germany and the US voted in favor of Mi-
crosoft, while Britain and France voiced a
clear ‘no’ but were open to supporting Mi-
crosoft in future if‘vital modifications’are
incorporated in the OOXML structure.In-
dia preferred to follow this argument,
though initially it went all out against Mi-
crosoft.As expected,the technical institu-
tions,IITs and IIMs are completely in sup-
port of ODF, and believe that the OOXML
is not ‘open’ enough to be certified as a
global standard, as it doesn’t represent a
common ground across products. They
argue that ODF has originated through a
process of evolution and right since its in-
ception, it has been completely ‘vendor
neutral’.
Growth of ODFODF is the brainchild of Sun Microsys-
tem’s OpenOffice, formerly known as Star
Office,started off in 1999 by Star Division,
as an attempt to build a non-proprietary
XML-based interoperable office suite. A
year later,Sun Microsystems acquired Star
Division and for the next two years, all it
did was to invite source codes through an
open-to-all licensing mechanism. An
XML community project was also em-
barked upon,and the two finally united in
December 2002, at an OASIS (Organiza-
tion for Advancement of Structured Infor-
mation Standards) conference, where the
arrival of ODF was formally upheld.
Vendor supportBut it was only in May 2006, after regular
overhauling, public consultations and two
enhanced draft versions of the format were
released,that the ODF achieved ISO certifi-
cation.The next obvious step was to consol-
idate this fete by attracting other software
creators into adopting the ODF. One of the
first to oblige was Adobe, which up-
graded its PDF format to sync up with
38 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Vishnu Anand
Applies To: Office applications’users
USP: Comparing the marketstakes for the two global officesuite formats
Primary Link: www.iso.org
Google Keywords: ODF,OOXML
DIRECT HIT!
��
OOXML or ODF:Which One Will Survive?Against the backdrop of the same old Open Source vs Paid debate, two formats are vying for global acceptancefrom ISO in the office suite space
technology-office format wars_final.qxp 10/23/2007 12:43 PM Page 38
ODF. In July 2006, Google joined the ODF
bandwagon by allowing compatibility of its
online Office suite, Google Apps (which in-
cludes individual applications like Google
Docs and Google Spreadsheets) with ODF.
Besides Google and Adobe, the ODF loyal-
ists’ club includes founder members IBM,
Oracle, Red Hat and Novell.
The simple idea of designing a skeleton
for software developers to build their appli-
cations on,specifically office and word pro-
cessing applications,and requiring them to
only tweak the backend system to suit their
needs did the trick for ODF. To simplify
things further, the ODF architecture has
sub-divided the systems into convenient
and flexible components – Scalable Vector
Graphics (SVG), Mathematical Formulas
(MathML), Embedded links (XLink), Syn-
chronized Multimedia Integration Lan-
guage (SMIL) and Forms definitions
(XForms), each of which is built on Open
Source platform. While SVG is an XML
specification that allows scripting for static
and animated graphics,MathML integrates
mathematical formulae into WWW docu-
ments, and XLink allows the inclusion of
hyperlinks within XML documents.
Xforms, originally designed for XHTML,
incorporates the Web Forms functions into
the application while SMIL is the language
for describing multimedia presentations
within an XML based framework.
Beefing up OOXMLOOXML on the other hand is a beefed up
version of Microsoft’s XML based format
that was introduced as part of Office 2003
suite.Back then,data was not compressed
and was stored in a single XML file, with
binary data, like images, being repre-
sented as BASE64 strings. This is a posi-
tional notation process that uses the
alphabets A-Z and numerals 0-9 for first
64 digits of the code, while the last two
digits are various combinations of num-
bers and digits with specific tags.
But during the development of Office
12 (more popularly known as Office 2007),
Microsoft resorted to following an ODF
model by storing data in a number of small
packet files, each of which are embedded
within a .zip file.Having got this format cer-
tified by the European Computer Manufac-
turers Association (ECMA), Microsoft ap-
proached ISO for certification.
Head to headAt the very basic level of document read-
ability, both ODF and OOXML work in the
same way,and no visible difference can be
observed in terms of ‘openness’. But the
shortcoming clearly lies in two depart-
ments – backward compatibility and gen-
eralization across platforms. In that re-
spect, ODF and OOXML were created for
two distinctly different purposes. While
Microsoft intended the OOXML to be in
sync with the feature set of Office 2007,
and make it backward compatible with
earlier editions of the suite, ODF began as
a general document markup format, cre-
ated for and by Linux enthusiasts.As Open
Source grew out of Linux boom, so did
ODF. Hence, it can be
compared to what
HTML did to Web
pages.As of now,ODF
has come to be
known as a format
that is conducive to
creating new office
suite applications
that wish to be called
‘Open Source suites;’ which in turn trans-
lates as a format that encourages compe-
tition and development of new products,
each similar to the other. Contrary to this,
OOXML ensures that nobody can clone
the Microsoft model of Office, while pay-
ing more emphasis on detail and smooth
operation.
User interestBy the time the ISO panel meets in Febru-
ary, Microsoft should make the OOXML
‘open’enough for use by any third party de-
veloper, who in all probability, will belong
to the open source community. The devel-
oper should be able to use,modify,interop-
erate and sync up existing and newer appli-
cations on the OOXML platform. This will
ensure two things – a certain similarity of
the OOXML to ODF in terms of flexibility
and interoperability and two, a major
chunk of Microsoft’s proprietary Office
backbone thrown open for external devel-
opers to modify and create new applica-
tions. From the users’ perspective, this
would mean an automatic sync up between
multiple office suite applications,irrespec-
tive of which vendor they have purchased it
from.When two or more office suites begin
‘talking’to each other,it will create room for
better usability, synchronization and the
ability to invoke specific applications from
other suites, if needed.For instance, a doc-
ument or spreadsheet you have created us-
ing one vendor’s application,can be opened
and modified in another’s – because they
would have been created around the same
universal format. For a developer, this
means a massive broadening of arenas for
collaborations, XML-based programs that
blend across different products and appli-
cations,and a common skeleton that can be
done up the way your unique application
demands. If all goes well, this fete will be
achieved by the end of February,after ISO’s
final meeting to settle the ODF versus
OOXML battle.
40 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Trends
�
Created in 1999 2003
Created by StarOffice Microsoft
USP Interoperability,
support from Open
Source community
Massive user base,
keen interest from
Microsoft supporters
and vendors
How they Compare
ODF OOXML
technology-office format wars_final.qxp 10/23/2007 12:44 PM Page 40
Enterprise Implementation
41 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Remote App Streaming The upcoming Windows 2008 Server has built Application Streaming into its Terminal Services.
This allows you to stream a single application to as many users as you want over the network
In the September ’07 issue we prom-
ised to do a series on the upcoming
Windows Server 2008, code named
Longhorn, and take you through a new
feature every month after we’ve actually
worked on it. That time has finally come,
and this month, we’re starting with ‘not’
one, but two exciting new features in
Windows Server 2008.
The feature we’re going to cover in
this article is remote application
streaming. However, before we get into
this feature, there’s some good news:
MS has released Windows Server 2008
RC0 this month. With this release, the
long-awaited first public beta of Mi-
crosoft’s Hypervisor is also out.
So in a separate article, we’re going
to tell you all about the new Hypervisor.
Remote App Streaming Application Streaming, is not new, but
it’s not too old either. Citrix Presenta-
tion Server provides the same on Win-
dows Platform. But that is a third party
software, which you need to purchase
separately.
Windows Server 2008 has the ap-
plication streaming feature built in. Be-
fore we go further and see how to install
and use it, let’s first understand what is
Remote App Streaming.
Streaming refers to accessing data
or files before it has completely down-
loaded or landed on your local machine.
The common term which most of us are
familiar with is media (music and video)
streaming. Here you listen or watch a me-
dia file without having the file locally on
your machine.
Similarly, when we say application
streaming, we mean running a file or an
app without installing or having it on
your local machine. The app resides on a
server and executes utilizing the re-
sources of server. All you’re accessing is
the display of that app on your terminal.
The benefits of application streaming
are plenty. You can have a single copy of
app and stream it across to hundreds of
users. The users on the other hand can
access the app from anywhere using any
machine. The mgmt becomes easier as
the admin has to manage, update, and se-
cure a single copy of the app residing on
the server.
Another good thing about such a
method of app delivery is that it uses re-
Anindya Roy
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: CIOs
USP: Learn how to use AppStreaming with Win Server 2008
Primary Link: http://www.short-enurl.com/6ufja
Google Keywords: App Streaming
SERIES
PART II
LH
��
From this Window you can select as many installed apps as you want to stream over
Terminal Services
enterprise implementation_Remote App Streaming with Windows Server 2008_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:39 PM Page 68
sources of the server and you don’t have
to upgrade all nodes or desktops in case
you are upgrading one app whose system
requirements do not meet the require-
ment of the desktops.
Pre-RequisitesThere aren’t too many pre-requisites to
test App Streaming. A machine with de-
cent processing capability and a good
amount of RAM is sufficient. We installed
it on a Core 2 Duo Extreme 3.0 machine
with 2 GB RAM. The machine should be
connected over the network so that a node
can connect to it and access the streamed
app. We used a standard 100 Mbps net-
work for this. The version of Windows
Server 2008 used was the latest RC0 re-
lease. It is available for download from Mi-
crosoft’s website.
The client can be any machine run-
ning on Windows XP, 2000, 2003, Vista,
or Longhorn Server. But the only prereq-
uisite is that it should have Remote Desk-
top Client version 6.0 installed. Longhorn
and Vista come preloaded with RDC 6.0
but for WinXP, Win2000, and Win 2003,
you have to download and install it from
http://support.microsoft.
com/kb/925876.
InstallationThis is pretty straightforward. All you
need to do is add the Terminal Server Role
to your Windows Server 2008 and install
the Remote App functionality. To do so, first
open the Server Manager Console from Ad-
ministrative Tools and click on the Roles
option at the left pane of the window. Now
from the main window click on the ‘Add
Roles’ link. It will open up a wizard. Click
on ‘Next’ once and it will show you all the
possible 17/18 Roles available with Win-
dows Server 2008. Check the ‘Terminal
Services’ role and continue the wizard.
After clicking a few more ‘Next’ but-
tons you will land to a screen where you
will be asked to select a ‘Role Service’ for
the terminal service role. Select on ‘Termi-
nal Services.’ Now again continue with the
wizard till you are asked to specify an au-
thentication method for your Terminal
Services. If it is for a test setup (which most
likely will be the case) select the second op-
tion which says ‘Do not require Network
Level Authentication.’ Now continue
pressing Next till you get a summary page
which asks you to confer and start the in-
stallation. Click on the Install button and
let it finish. With this believe it or not your
App Streaming Server setup is done.
Streaming an ApplicationAs your Streaming server is installed, now
share an app for streaming. We tried it out
with two apps. One was the good old Word-
Pad and the other Adobe Photoshop 7,
both worked flawlessly.
Adding a new app for streaming is also
a very simple process. All you have to do is
first install the app (which you want to
stream) on the server. Then go to Adminis-
trative Tools>Terminal Services and start
the ‘TS RemoteApp Manager’ console.
Click on the ‘Add RemoteApp Program’
link. A wizard opens up, click on Next on
the first page and it will list down all the in-
stalled apps on the server. Select all the
apps you want to stream and click Next.
Two more clicks and the wizard finishes.
Now, at the bottom of the ‘RemoteApp
Manager’ console a new table appears.
Here you will see all the apps selected for
streaming. Click on them one by one. A
new list appears at the right end of con-
sole. Here you will notice two links ‘Creat
.rdp file’ and ‘Create Windows Installer
Package.’ Clicking on any of these starts
the wizard. Depending on the link you
have clicked, at the end of the wizard an
.msi or an .rdp file get generated. Now you
can copy these files to any client machine.
Here the .rdp file is a direct shortcut to con-
nect to the Streamed app whereas .msi file
is an installer which installs the .rdp file to
the program files of the client machine.
The benefit of the .msi file is that you can
do a remote deployment of the .rdp file to
all the machines at a go.
Once done, click on .rdp file. It first
asks for authentication and then con-
nects and opens the streamed app from
any machine on the network running
on any Windows OS and terminal server
client 6.0. When the app starts, it’s very
difficult to explore if it’s running locally
or from any remote machine.
Enterprise Implementation
42 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
On the window, first click on the application listed at the bottom and then click on the
.rdp file to create a rdp shortcut for connecting the application
�
enterprise implementation_Remote App Streaming with Windows Server 2008_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:40 PM Page 69
Enterprise Implementation
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Virtualization in Windows Server 2008 The first public beta of Microsoft’s Hypervisor has been released for its upcoming server OS.We
checked out how well it works and the pre-requisites for setting it up
Finally, the long-awaited Windows
hypervisor has been released with
the Windows Server 2008 RC0,
which was earlier code named Long-
horn. The Hypervisor is still in its in-
fancy, but that does not reflect upon the
installation process, which is as simple
as adding a new Role to any Windows
Server.
Once it is installed, you will love its
usability and performance. Before we go
ahead, let’s first understand in a nut-
shell what exactly is a hypervisor.
Understanding hypervisors A hypervisor is a technique to run virtu-
alization in full-virtualization mode,
which means a setup where the virtual-
ization layer essentially runs on top of
the hardware and below the Operating
System. You will know the difference by
comparing it with any traditional virtu-
alization system, where the virtualiza-
tion layer runs on top of the host. The
hypervisor runs directly on top of the
hardware, and uses the virtualization
features of the underlying CPU, eg. In-
tel’s VT and AMD’s Pacifica.
As the virtualization layer sits
directly on top of the hardware, it is very
thin and lightweight. It is also more re-
source conscious. Both of these features
make its performance much better as
compared to traditional virtualization
techniques.
The other well known hypervisor is
XEN from Citrix.
PrerequisitesTo run Windows hypervisor, the list of
prerequisites is not small. As we said ear-
lier the hardware should be running
processors supporting virtualization na-
tively.
For our tests, we used a machine
with an Intel Core2Duo Extreme 3.0
GHz processor, which supports Intel VT.
We used 2 GB RAM, as we had to dedi-
cate some of it to the guest machine and
some to the host running Windows
Server 2008.
Currently only the 64-bit version of
Windows Server 2008 RC0 supports the
installation of hypervisor, so we had a
copy of this as well.
InstallationFor installation of the Microsoft Hyper-
visor or the Windows Server Virtualiza-
tion role, you have to do some tweaking
before you can install it through the
Server Management console. This is
Anindya Roy
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Sys admins, CIOs
USP: Understand how to use MSWSV
Primary Link:http://www.microsoft.com
Google Keywords: Hypervisor,Longhorn, WSV
��
Top two: Windows XP and 2003 running as virtual machines on Windows Server Vir-
tualization. Bottom: Virtualization Management console to configure the VMs
SERIES
PART III
LH
enterprise implementation_Windows Hypervisor_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:20 PM Page 68
because WSV is not present in the Add
Role wizard of Server Management con-
sole, by default. To get this role enabled,
you have to first install two updates. No,
you don’t have to download anything.
These updates ship along with the Win-
dows Server 2008 RC0 but have to be in-
stalled separately.
To do so, first go to <system volume>
\Windows\WSV. Here, you will see two
MSU files. Install both of them, one by
one. Once the installation is done, go
back to the Server Management con-
sole’s Add role wizard and you will see a
new role called
Windows Server
Virtualization.
Now, go to Ad-
ministrative tools
and start Server
Management con-
sole. Click on the
Roles option from
the left of the win-
dow.
Now, if you
can see Add role in
the main window
pane, then click on it. A
wizard will open. Select
the penultimate option,
which says Windows
Server Virtualization
and follow the wizard
till that gets installed.
Using theHypervisorTo start working with
the Windows Server Vir-
tualization, go to the Administrative
tools again and click on the Windows Vir-
tualization Manager. A win-
dow will open.
From this window you
can create, manage, modify
and delete any guest OS on
the server.
To create a new guest OS
you just have to click on
Newon the right hand side
pane of the main window. It
will open up a drop-down
which will ask you whether
you want to create a Virtual
machine, a Hard disk, or a
Floppy disk.
Click on the Virtual machine option
and a new wizard will pop up.
Follow the wizard as shown in the images
and it will create a virtual machine for
you.
Once you have created virtual ma-
chines, it’s just a matter of turning them
on and using them from the Windows
Virtualization Manager interface.
Interesting findingsOne great thing about WSV is that it is
backward compatible with .vhd files cre-
ated by VPC or MS Virtual Server. And
it’s just a matter of creating new virtual
machines with pre-existing hard-disk
images, to use those old VHD’s with WSV.
One problem we faced during this was
that the graphical interface of Linux is
not very compatible with WSV, till now.
We tried installing Fedora 7, Gentoo and
Mandriva on top of WSV, but none of
them were able to start the graphical in-
terface while installing. But, as this is the
first public Beta release of WSV, it might
be happening due to a bug, which will
eventually be rectified.
Right now the technology looks very
promising and we expect to see it evolv-
ing as a robust hypervisor for Windows
platform, in the coming future.
Enterprise Implementation
46 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
File name: client.conf
Windows Hypervisor let’s you create virtual machines through
a simple wizard. It first asks you to give your VM a name
You can define a new virtual HDD for your virtual machine,
or boot from an existing one made from MS VPS or VS
You can install the OS for your VM from an optical
disk, or from an ISO image �
enterprise implementation_Windows Hypervisor_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:20 PM Page 69
Enterprise Implementation
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IIS 7:A Modular ApproachInternet Information Server 7 changes the way Microsoft Web Server works by moving every-
thing into a modular pipelined approach
In the Web world today, IIS and
Apache are the two leaders in Web
servers. Although a leader for a very
long time, Apache has slowly been
losing ground to IIS over the last few
months as covered by Netcraft.
A new version of IIS waiting in the
wings is further set to erode the domi-
nance of Apache by introducing a huge
bunch of features. We shall take a look
at these features in the coming months.
This month we start off with a two part
look at the way IIS7 manages the fea-
tures it provides using modules in a
pipeline rather than a monolithic
implementation.
Traditionally, IIS has always been an
all-or-nothing solution. That is, you ei-
ther install IIS in full or don’t install it at
all. Even in Windows Server 2003, al-
though it was not installed by default,
when you chose to install IIS Web Server,
it would install all the features associ-
ated with the Web server– whether you
wanted them or not.
In IIS7 this approach has been
changed completely. Rather than hav-
ing everything installed by default, you
can pick and choose the modules you
want to install. Before we get into that,
let’s look at the architectural differences
between IIS6 and IIS7 that make this
modularity possible.
IIS 6 ArchitectureIIS6 has what’s called the Classic Re-
quest Pipeline. This is the traditional
method in which the core Web server
can basically do one thing – pick up a re-
quested file and send it to the client. It
also has a number of other features built
in – such as Authentication (Anony-
mous, Basic, NTLM, etc), Logging, Com-
pression, etc. Using all of this, the Web
server is great at picking up static files
such as HTML and images and sending
them back to the client. But what about
non-static pages such as ASP/ASP.NET
or PHP? This is where a deterministic
feature creates a new path in the request
pipeline. It has basically two parts – one
is mapping that tells the Web server that
if a file of a particular type is requested
then it should not simply send it to the
user but divert it to the second part. The
second part in turn is either a CGI or
Vinod Unny, Enterprise Infotech
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Web admins
USP: The integrated pipeline
allows features of IIS and
ASP.NET to be used by other
platforms such as PHP
Primary Link: www.iis.net
Google Keywords: iis7
SERIES
PART I
IIS
��
IIS6’s Classic Request pipeline had many different paths depending on the requested
file, which resulted in lots of feature duplication
IIS6 Architecture
AUTHENTICATION
AUTHENTICATION
MAPPING
MAPPING
RESPONSE
RESPONSE
None
Forms Windows
ASPX AXD
Redirection Caching
Basic NTLM
SAP.NET
Static
Logging Compression
CGI ISAPI
enterprise implementation-iis7_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:10 PM Page 68
an ISAPI component that loads the file
and processes it before returning the
output back to the original pipeline, so
that it is sent back to the client. Now
comes the slightly strange part. The new
path that is created can also have its own
set of features. For instance, ASP.NET
2.0 also has its own authentication rou-
tines – Forms or Windows – that can be
used in its pages. Not only that, ASP.NET
also has its own deterministic mapping
for processing different types of
ASP.NET files. Refer to the diagram on
the IIS6 architecture to understand this.
IIS 7 ArchitectureIn IIS7, the architecture has been
changed completely. Instead of having a
pipeline that diverts into different paths,
IIS7 now has what is called an ‘Inte-
grated Pipeline.’ This uses the modular-
ity of IIS7 architecture to use features
from both IIS as well as compatible solu-
tions like ASP.NET.
To give a better understanding of
what this means, consider this: the issue
of feature duplication in IIS6 in different
pipelines, say Authentication in both IIS
and ASP.NET is now done away with.
Each type of authentication is simply a
module for IIS7 that can be integrated
into the main IIS pipeline itself. This
means that now IIS7 itself can have not
just Anonymous, Basic and NTLM au-
thentication, but also Forms and Win-
dows based authentication. This goes for
all other such features as well.
In fact, the whole concept of having
ISAPI or CGI as a jump-off point into a
different pipeline is now redundant (al-
though still available in case of need for
backward compatibility). This
allows ASP.NET itself to be a part of the
IIS7 pipeline rather than running as a
new path in the system. Now these are
not the only modules one can have –
there are more than 40 modules avail-
able in IIS7 out of the box that can be
used on the websites on the IIS7 web
server. There are many others that one
can either download or actually go
ahead and write in .NET using the IIS7
SDK. But there is one more feature of
this modular approach that makes it a
real killer application.
Remember that in IIS6, ASP.NET
was an ISAPI extension and a 3rd party
platform such as PHP was a CGI app?
CGI traditionally has been slower as well
as less supported on IIS6 due to its na-
ture. However, due to the integrated na-
ture of the pipeline in IIS7, PHP can now
be part of this pipeline as well and start
using the modules of the pipeline like
any other module. That is to say, PHP
too can start using features like Forms
and Windows authentication just like
ASP.NET 2.0 can within IIS7. This gives
PHP developers a great new Web server
platform to develop on to be able to take
advantage of features that the Web
server provides rather than writing it
themselves.
This, however, is an article for an-
other day. We’ll take a look at exactly
how to do this on IIS7 next month. Till
then, head over to www.iis.net to see
some samples of other modules that are
available as well.
Enterprise Implementation
50 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
�
IIS7 has an integrated pipeline where features of IIS and ASP.NET are both used as
modules in the pipeline, and even other platforms like PHP can use these features
IIS7 Architecture
AUTHENTICATION
MAPPING
RESPONSE
None Basic NTLM Forms Windows
Static CGI ISAPI ASPX
Logging Compression Redirection Caching
AXD
enterprise implementation-iis7_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:11 PM Page 69
Enterprise Implementation
51 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
The Linux Rescue BoxCreate images of all user workstations on your network and back them up to a central Linux Rescue Server,
which allows you to burn those images to CD/DVD or restore them directly over the network later
Backing up data from your users’
workstations is one of the most
taxing jobs for a system admin-
istrator, and it gets tougher with more
machines, and even more if multiple
OSs are involved. In this article, we will
see how to build a backup box, which
will do an image-based backup of work-
stations and later on facilitate restora-
tion over the network as well. Plus, it
can also be used to do remote image-
based OS deployments on backbone ma-
chines across the organization.
For this, we are using a Linux-based
backup system called ‘Linux rescue
server’. The software will allow you to
take image-based backups of your Win-
dows XP, Windows 2000/2003 or any
UNIX/Linux platform. You can download
the Rescue Server from the link given in
the Direct Hit box. You will get an ISO file,
that has to be burnt on a CD using Nero
or any other CD writing software. Make
sure you burn it at 4X writing speed.
Installation To install the Linux rescue server, hence-
forth called LRS, you will require at least
a P4 machine with 256 MB RAM and 80
GB HDD. Boot this machine with from the
LRS CD you just created. It will ask you to
fill in the IP address, Subnet mask, Gate-
way, etc.
Then you would be asked to select
keyboard layout etc. The installation
takes only 15 minutes. Remove the CD
and restart the machine and your LRS is
ready.
To configure LRS, take another ma-
chine connected on the same Subnet
and from a browser type in the IP
address http://<IP_Addrees_of_your
_Linux_Rescue_server>:1000. Give
username as ’root’ and password as ’lin-
box’ and you will be taken to its manage-
ment interface.
Configuring DHCP settings As our rescue server uses PXE (Preboot
eXecution Environment) for backing up
and restoring workstation data, you
need to configure a DHCP server on it. If
you already have a DHCP server, you
simply need to configure your server to
enable network booting of your rescue
machine. For exercising the second op-
tion, first disable the LRS DHCP server,
from the Webmin 'System/Bootup and
shutdown' module. Click on 'dhcp3-
server' and deactivate the 'Start at boot
time' option. Now, on your existing
DHCP server, add a few DHCP options in
the client addresses’ pool, with your
usual DHCP server configuration
interface. Set the ‘filename’ to ’/tftp-
boot/revoboot/bin/ revoboot.pxe’. It
Sanjay Majumder
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: IT managers; BackupManagers
USP: Take image-based backupsof all machines on your network
Primary Link:http://www.linbox.org
Google Keywords: Linux rescue
��
List of backup images that you can directly burn to a CD/DVD or configure it so that a
user can directly restore their workstation over the network via PXE booting
enterprise implementation_linux rescue box_final.qxp 10/20/2007 9:44 PM Page 68
sets the network boot program to load the
said file. This option is also usually avail-
able as ‘BootFileName' under 'Option
DHCP 67’.
Then, set 'next-server' to the IP ad-
dress of your LRS. It is usually available
as ‘Boot Server Host Name' under 'Option
DHCP 66’. Here, give IP address of your
LRS and filename as /tftpboot/revoboot/
bin/revoboot.pxe. If you don’t have a
DHCP server, then you can use the rescue
server‘s DHCP feature.
In order to configure DHCP on this
server itself, go to the DHCP form from its
Web interface and select ’DHCP server‘.
Just give the name of the DHCP server
here and leave other fields as default and
scroll down to the Add pools option. Click
on this and specify the IP address range
for the DHCP and Apply the changes.
Now, click on ‘Start DHCP’. This will start
the DHCP server on your network, which
will also act as TFTP server.
Taking backups For taking backup, just boot a worksta-
tion from its network card using PXE
boot. On boot, you will get a text-based
menu. Select ’Add a client’. Now, you will
be asked for client-name and password,
give ’root’ as the client-name and pass-
word as ’linbox’. On successful login, you
will get another boot menu which lets
you launch the system backups and
restorations. Select the option ’Image
creation shared’. This will connect the
machine to the Linux rescue server
where all backup images are kept. It will
automatically start taking the backup of
machines and once the backup process is
over the machines are automatically
made to shutdown.
Managing backupsOnce the backup is taken as an image,
next step is to configure the image in
such a way that remote workstations
can be restored back, easily. In order to
do this, open the administrative console
of LRS using a Web browser and go to
‘System backup>Image’.
Here, you will be shown the layout of
your boot menu and below that you will
see the list of backup images (local or
shared) that you have taken. You can ei-
ther burn these images on a CD/DVD, or
alternatively, you can move the backup
images to the boot menu. This way,
when a user workstation is booted from
PXE, the backup image is shown in the
boot menu and the user can restore back
his/her machine just by selecting the
backup image name, from the boot
menu. The restoration would be done di-
rectly from the LRS system over the net-
work.
If you want to create a CD/DVD out
of the backup image, just click on
Burn icon given next to the backup im-
age. The system will first create an ISO
image of the entire backup and then you
can either burn ISO images directly on
that system or you can later on
download the ISO image and burn it on
the system where you have a CD
writer. If you want to move the backup
image to boot menu, then go to the im-
age file and click on the upward arrow
icon given in the ’To menu’ option. This
will move the image file into the list of
boot menu.
Then from the Web interface, select
the ’Boot menus’ tab and you will see
the backup image that you have moved
has come into the boot menu list. Click
on Apply button to reflect the changes
in the boot menu.
Now when the client workstation
boots from the PXE, the boot menu will
also contain the name of the image file
that we have configured above. By se-
lecting that image, the restoration
process will be triggered and the work-
station will be restored back to its origi-
nal state.
This is only one of the useful fea-
tures of Linbox that we have demon-
strated in this article. There are so many
other useful features like inventory
management, file backup etc, that
you can explore yourself.
Enterprise Implementation
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File name: client.conf
��
This is the menu option that users see when they boot their machines using PXE. This
is where users can see the images of their machines for restoring or burning to a CD
enterprise implementation_linux rescue box_final.qxp 10/20/2007 9:45 PM Page 69
Enterprise Implementation
54 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Keep an Eye on Your CodeSubversion is an Open Source software that keeps track of the changes done to software code by different
developers. In case of conflict, unwanted changes can be revoked
In software companies, a code is devel-
oped in parts by different software de-
velopers. The code that is finally
optimized and delivered to the client is
more or less an assimilation of the isolated
code generated by these developers. As
these different packets pass through dif-
ferent levels, chances of inadvertent er-
rors creeping in become high. So it is
necessary to keep track of the code and en-
sure that unwanted mistakes can be re-
verted back without hassles. To ensure
this as well as improve the speed at which
documents are processed, you need a soft-
ware utility that can keep track of all this
and notify developers in case the same line
is edited by more than one developer. Sub-
version is one such Open Source and free
tool that is conceptually very similar to
Concurrent Version Control (CVS). It con-
sists of a repository of data located at the
server and a copy for the required docu-
ment kept at the user end, known as local
copy. Whenever someone wants to edit the
content of the document, he edits the lo-
cal copy, keeping the original copy intact.
After the changes have been done, the
copy stored on the repository is updated.
A good thing about this software is that
unlike CVS, the tool commits the changes
only if the entire commit process is com-
pleted or else it doesn’t. This helps in situ-
ations when a network failure occurs
while committing changes. In this article
we show you how to implement, configure
and use this version control system.
Installation & configuration For implementing subversion, one has to
install Apache 2.0, Subversion 1.4.5 and
Tortoise SVN on the system. You can get
the Apache 2.0 installation file from
Apache website and the rest from the link:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/. Apache,
we all know is a Web server, Subversion is
the tool that will take care of the entire
version control system and Tortoise SVN
is a subversion client that provides graph-
ical interface to the user who will be us-
ing this version control system. Installing
these three tools is pretty simple; all of
them come with an easy to use installer
for Windows.
After you have installed these, a bit of
tweaking is needed to get things going.
Navigate to the Subversion folder
through Windows Explorer, generally
found under ‘C:\Program files\.’ Copy the
files ‘/httpd/mod_dav_svn.so’ and
‘mod_authz_svn.so’ to Apache’s module
folder found under ‘C:\Program
files\Apache group\apache2\.’ Also copy
‘/bin/libdb43.dll’ file to Apache Module
directory. Open up Apache configuration
file ‘httpd.conf,’ which can be found
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Primary Link:
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In the ‘Working copy’ folder, you can check the status of documents that have been
updated on the repository
Enterprise Implementation-Version Control_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:09 PM Page 68
under Apache directory and look for the
following lines:
#LoadModule dav_fs_module mod-
ules/mod_dav_fs.so
#LoadModule dav_module
modules/mod_dav.so
If these lines are marked as com-
ments, then remove the ‘#’ character.
This is done so that whenever Apache
server starts, these modules are loaded
along. Further, add the following lines at
the end of the ‘LoadModule Section’ in
Apache’s configuration file:
LoadModule dav_svn_module
modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module mod-
ules/mod_authz_svn.so
Now configure Apache so that it can
handle the Subversion client, ie Tortois-
eSVN request and the URL that is should
use for Subversion repository. Open the
Apache configuration file and add the fol-
lowing lines at the end of the file:
<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNListParentPath on
SVNParentPath D:\SVN
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repositories"
AuthUserFile passwd
#AuthzSVNAccessFile svnaccessfile
#Require valid-user
</Location>
For simplicity, we have ignored the
line ‘Require valid-user,’ which is basi-
cally used for user authentication when-
ever someone wants to access the
repository. The first line tells Apache that
Subversion repository is available
through the following URL; ‘http:
//<server name or IP> /svn/’. The path
to the repository is specified on the 4th
line of the code provided above. So, if the
repository is in ‘svn’ directory, which is
under D: drive, then the path will be
‘D:\SVN’.
Working with SubversionTo get working with this version control
tool one has to create at least one reposi-
tory. A repository is a place where elec-
tronic data is stored and maintained for a
specific purpose. For creating the reposi-
tory, create a folder in D: drive and name
it as ‘svn’. Right click on the newly cre-
ated folder and select TortoiseSVN > Cre-
ate Repository here. It will ask ‘select the
type of repository you want to create.’ In
our case we chose BDB. Once the reposi-
tory is created, one can see different files
inside the ‘svn’ folder. These are configu-
ration and settings files, so please don’t
edit them or else it’ll give errors.
After the repository has been created,
one needs to import data to the reposi-
tory. But before that, one should organize
the repository so that data can be main-
tained easily later on. Most of the organ-
izations use three different directories to
maintain the development cycle. The first
is the ‘trunk’ directory that contains the
final version of each code or document,
second is ‘branches’ which contains the
copies that are distributed among devel-
opers to work on and the third is ‘tags’
which contains the tagged copies. For
better understanding of subversion we
will create only one folder, named ‘repo.’
Importing data to the repository is
pretty simple. Create a new folder on the
desktop and name it ‘test.’ Copy the file
which you want to add to the repository
to this newly created folder. For example,
we copied six different text files to this
folder. After this, right click on the
Enterprise Implementation
56 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
��
To update changes, made to the local copy of a document, on the repository, right
click on ‘working copy’ folder and click on ‘Update to revision’
Enterprise Implementation-Version Control_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:09 PM Page 69
‘test’ folder, go to Tortoise SVN > Import.
A dialog box opens up asking the URL of
the repository where you will be import-
ing files. Provide the URL and click on ‘Ok’
to add up the files. TortoiseSVN then im-
ports the complete directory tree includ-
ing all files to the repository.
To obtain a working copy on your sys-
tem you need to do a ‘checkout’ from the
repository, which means you need to get
the working copies from the repository to
your system. For this create a folder and
name it is as ‘Working Copy.’ Right click
on the newly created folder and go to Tor-
toiseSVN > Checkout. A ‘Checkout’ dia-
log will appear asking the URL of the
repository, where you can also see the
path to ‘Checkout Directory’. Click on
‘Ok’ to get working copies. In the next
window it will show the files and folders
that are being copied to the ‘Working
Copy’ folder and the final status. Now the
files that you want to work with are in the
‘Working Copy’ folder.
After one has finished working on a
particular file, the changes should be
made to the repository as well. Before
committing or making the change to the
repository, one should check whether the
copy he or she has is up-to-date or not. For
this, right click on the ‘Working Copy’
folder and go to TortoiseSVN > Update. If
the copy you have is up-to-date then there
will be no conflict and you can commit
the changes. For this, right click on the
same folder and go to TortoiseSVN >
Commit.
A conflict occurs when more than two
people change the same line in a document
or a code. Now this tool doesn’t know any-
thing about the document or the devel-
oper’s code that has been modified, as it
doesn’t understand what is right and what
is wrong. To check yourself, open up the
document which has conflict and you’ll
notice the conflict area marked as:
<<<<<<< filename
your changes
=======
code merged from repository
>>>>>>> revision
So, wherever any conflict happens,
this version control tool generates three
different file into the ‘Working Copy’
folder: one is your current working copy;
the second is the older version of your
working copy, i.e. the copy
before your last update; and the
third is the copy that has just been
received from the repository, ie
after you’ve updated the current
working copy.
To solve this conflict, open the ‘Con-
flict Editor.’ For this, right click on the file
that shows conflict and go to TortoiseSVN
> Edit Conflict. Make the necessary
changes to the code, ie retain the lines
that you feel are right and delete the ones
that are useless. After you’ve done the
modifications, save the file. For this, right
click on the modified file and go to Tortois-
eSVN > Resolved. Finally, save the
changes to the repository.
Use the TortoiseMerge tool to simultaneously view changes made to different ver-
sions of the code by different developers
�
In Log Messages, you can view the time and date of changes made by different devel-
opers on a particular software code
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Enterprise Implementation
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Enterprise Implementation
59 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Host Intrusion Detection with OSSECMaintaining the integrity of a machine is a problem that can be dealt with by using techniques such as HIDS.
In this article we talk about the feature-rich, open source OSSEC-HIDS and how you can implement it
With an increase in number of
attacks, system breaches,
and software exploits
within an enterprise, integrity of the
system is a concern. This problem is
further compounded by tools that can
delete traces of an attacker. HIDS (Host
based intrusion detection) is one popu-
lar technique used for intrusion
detection. Here, we look at the imple-
mentation of an open source HIDS
called OSSEC-HIDS, which can
detect rootkits, perform file integrity
checking, log analysis, and registry
monitoring.
On the feature front, this solution
provides time based alerts and active
response components. It supports both
standalone and server-agent models for
Linux/Unix, but doesn’t support stand-
alone monitoring on a Windows
machine. This is because one can’t
install its server on Windows. After
detecting an attack, its active response
component either automatically blocks
the attacking machine or executes a
specified script/program. Its log analy-
sis has support for Apache, ISS, Squid,
event logs, Snort etc. and it automati-
cally analyzes the content of log files.
If an odd entry is detected, it
immediately sends an alert.
OSSEC ArchitectureThe architecture of this solution is a
simple Server-Agent architecture as
shown in the figure below. It uses
ossec-syscheckd daemon for monitoring
the file for changes at the server as well
as the agent end. The ossec-syscheckd
also keeps track of the file’s (the one that
is being monitored) md5sum, date, file
permissions etc. The ossec-logcollector
daemon on the agent collects logs,
passes them to the ossec-agentd which
in turn passes logs as well as details of all
events through encrypted traffic to
ossec-remoted running on the server.
All events are then passed to ossec-
analysisd, which decodes and analyzes
the logs and all other events. All active
responses are handled by ossec-execd
and email alerts are handled by ossec-
maild, both running at the server end.
Installation To install the OSSEC server, download
the ossec-hids-latest.tar.gz file from the
URL mentioned in the Direct Hit Box.
It can only be installed on a Linux/Unix
machine. Now, untar and unzip the
package by using the following
command:
tar -zxvf ossec-hids-latest.tar.gz
Now, go to the location where you
have extracted the package and execute
the installation script by using the
command:
# ./install.sh
The script will now ask the kind of
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USP: Monitoring machines
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OSSEC-HIDS Architecture
AGENT
syscheckd
(daemon to
monitor host)
.
.
.
logcollector
(daemon to
collect logs)
logcollector
remoted
(daemon for
active
response
forwarding )
execd
maild (daemon
for generating
email alerts)
syscheckd
analysisd
(event analysis,
enforces configura-
tion and rules,
generates alerts)
execd
(daemon for
managing
responses)
agentd
(event forward-
ing and sends
server notifica-
tions )
SERVER
OSSEC-HIDS uses seven daemons to communicate between server and agent
enterprise implementation- ossec hids.qxp 10/22/2007 10:06 PM Page 68
installation that you want, type ‘server’
and proceed. Further it will ask if you
want email notifications. Say ‘yes’ and
provide the email address. Next define
the component that you want to run:
integrity check daemon, rootkit detec-
tion, and active response. To run all of
them at once type ‘Y’. Once, the instal-
lation is done, to start OSSEC-HIDS run
the command below:
# /var/ossec/bin/ossec-control start
Once, the OSSEC server gets started,
it will automatically start monitoring
your server. To monitor other servers
and hosts in the network install agents
on them. Installing agents on Windows
is simple, just download the .exe from
the OSSEC’s website and run it.
After installation, provide authenti-
cation key, to get agent authenticated by
the server. Authentication key is gener-
ated at the OSSEC server, but before gen-
erating a key, you’ve to add agents to it.
To do this, go to the location /var/os-
sec/bin on the machine that has OSSEC
server installed and then run the./man-
age_agents command. Now, to add an
agent, type ‘A’ and press Enter. Provide
the name of the agent, then provide the
IP address of the agent and lastly an ID
for it. Now the script will ask you to con-
firm the information you provided. To
confirm press ‘Y’. Once the agent is
added, then to generate the key for the
agent, type‘E’ and press Enter. You will
now be able to see an agent menu where
you will find a list of all the agents that
you have added. Type in the ID of the
agent for which you want to generate
the key and the key will be generated.
Copy and paste this key manually to the
agent that you earlier installed on the
machine that you want to monitor. The
agent will get automatically authenti-
cated by the OSSEC server.
Configuring Web User Interface OSSEC’s WUI does not come integrated
with the core package. You have to
download its WUI package using the
‘http://www.ossec.net/files/ui/ossec-
wui-0.2.tar.gz’ link. Download it, untar
it, and move the extracted files to your
Web server directory say /var/www/os-
sec-wui. Now, go to the location where
you have kept the extracted files and to
start the WUI setup script run the
following command:
./setup.sh
After this, you need to add Web
server users (mostly Apache or www) to
OSSEC group. Then configure per
missions for the tmp directory and
for this run the commands written be-
low:
#chmod 770 /tmp
#chgrp apache /tmp
and then restart Apache. Your WUI
must be accessible at http: //<local-
host>/ossec-wui/.
Configuring rules for Windows monitoring After installing an agent on Windows,
you can also customize the rules for mon-
itoring. These rules are configured on OS-
SEC server. Once the server gets updated,
it will push the configured rules to the
agent. By default Windows policy moni-
toring files are present in the
/var/ossec/etc/shared directory. In the
directory you will find three files: win_ap-
plications_rcl.txt, win_audit _rcl. txt and
win_malware_rcl.txt. In win_applica-
tions_rcl.txt you will find the default
rules for detecting applications such as
Yahoo, Skype, Limewire, AOL, and
Kazaa. You can also add new application
rules to this file. For example you can cre-
ate rules for detecting gtalk and generate
alerts. For this, open the file with VI and
write the following command lines:
[Chat/IM - gtalk] [any] []
C:\Program Files\Google\Google
Enterprise Implementation
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��
Before agent monitors the host, a specific key is to be generated on the server for
authentication, which is then manually entered on the agents
Enterprise Implementation- OSSEC HIDS.qxp 10/22/2007 9:59 PM Page 69
62 A CYBERMEDIA Publication
Toward a Well-connected EnterpriseToward a Well-connected Enterprise
Strategies for a Healthy WANStrategies for a Healthy WAN
PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
As organizations consolidate their data centers and provide remote access to their branch of-fices, the management of WAN infrastructure takes center stage.We surveyed key CIOs acrossthe country to find out how they were managing their WAN infrastructures, how were they optimizing their bandwith, what sort of clauses were they putting in their SLAs to manage service providers, and much more. In this story, we explore those responses and answers tosome key pain points in WAN management
Anil Chopra and Swapnil Arora
Cover Story
cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:04 PM Page 16
63 A CYBERMEDIA Publication
Two key trends are fueling the WAN marketgrowth today. One is branch office automation,wherein organizations are trying to empower
their branches with IT. Second is IT infrastructure con-solidation, wherein organizations are moving awayfrom distributed computing and moving their entire ITinfrastructure in one central location. While this en-sures better manageability of the IT infrastructure, it
puts additional stress on the WAN connectivity. That’sbecause most of the processing takes place centrally,and branch offices require WAN connectivity to accesscentrally hosted applications.
Under such circumstances, CIOs must have a strat-egy to not only ensure availability of their WAN links,but also their bandwidth. Both these factors are equallyimportant. Availability can be managed in many ways:providing backup links, going for third party support tomonitor your links, and enforcing stringent SLAs toname a few. Ensuring bandwidth availability on theother hand is not a one-time process, but an ongoingone.
The third key issue is security, which becomesmore important when an organization uses the Internetto interconnect its various branch offices. The way outhere is by using VPNs. They can provide secure con-nectivity between both branch offices and HO, andeven between roaming mobile users and the HO.There’s a fourth aspect that’s extremely important aswell, of SLAs. They play an important role in not onlyensuring high availability of WAN links, but also ensur-ing bandwidth and QoS. There’s a lot more to SLAs, andwe’ll cover that subsequently.
So as one can well imagine, there are lots of issuesto be tackled when it comes to managing WAN linksand keeping them healthy. To do this story, we inter-acted with CIOs of key enterprises across the country.We tried to find answers to all the issues we just talkedabout and how were they handling them. As one couldwell imagine, it’s not an easy job and requires a well-planned strategy. In this story, we’ll talk about this inmore detail.
Identify and manage pain pointsThe first step in WAN management is to identif y thekey pain points with your existing WAN infrastructuresetup. Is it availability of your WAN links? Is it band-width, security, or something else? Let’s look at themone by one.
Link availabilityMore than 50% of our respondents found it to be some-what of an issue. Lack of availability in WAN links hap-pens only sometimes. This is possibly because amajority of them already have backup lines, whichtakes care of downtime. However this is not the only ��
PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:04 PM Page 17
solution. Companies could also outsource their WANmanagement to a third party, which will ensure that thelinks are always available. This is a good and cost effec-tive strategy to adopt for organizations with a largenumber of branches, like banks. That’s because itwould be unfeasible for them to hire manpower just tomanage their WAN links in their remote branch of-fices. It’s better to hire a third party and let them worryabout it. What the organization should do is implementthe right management solutions to keep track of itsWAN links. This would help in immediately identifyinglinks that are down, so that corrective measures can betaken. The other thing it should do is put in stringentSLAs that define the time period within which down-time would be tackled. We’ve seen situations where acomplete bank branch was unoperational for manyhours because its WAN links were down and there was
nobody available to fix it.
Give some basic training to branch staffAnother thing to do is to give some basic training to atleast one person in the branch on what to do should theWAN link fail. This doesn’t have to be a detailed tech-nology walk through. A few basic guidelines would suf-fice. For instance, the person should know where theWAN link is terminating in the branch office, and beable to identify the particular cable. In the case we justmentioned, the reason for downtime turned out to be apulled out WAN cable, possibly by the cleaning staffwhile cleaning in the morning. If the local person isgiven the basic knowledge to check for such things,downtime can be reduced.
One must keep in mind that in branch offices, thesekinds of practical situations can occur and therefore
should not be neglected.
Understand your bandwidth needsAnother critical pain point as far as WAN manag-ment goes is availability of bandwidth. One of thereasons for this can be the ISP, which can be tack-eld by putting in stringent SLAs. In fact, in our sur-vey, the overall satisfaction level of therespondents with the level of service offered bytheir service providers was quite high.
The bigger issue is judging your actual band-width requirements. How many applications arecurrently loading your WAN links, and how manymore applications are you likely to add in the fu-
64 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
How are your branch offices connected with HO?
No answer 4%
What measures have you taken to minimizedowntime of your WAN links?
No answer 6%
Have backup links63%
Have out-sourced WANmanagement toa third party 11%
Stringent SLAswith serviceprovider13%
Other 7%
Over private WANLinks37%
Over the Internet18%
A mix of both41%
Cover Story
Choice of WAN LinksA majority of the respondents said that they were usingprivate WAN links to interconnect their branch offices.Very few said they were using only Internet for branchoffice connectivity, and the remaining were using a mixof both private as well as Internet links.Interestingly, none of the respondents who were usingthe Internet for WAN links were doing any sort of WANoptimization; and just about everybody over privatelinks was either using a WAN Optimizer or doing somesort of QoS or bandwidth prioritization for their appli-cations. Most of the organizations having more than100 branch offices were using private WAN links.
��
cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:04 PM Page 18
ture? Are your WAN links geared to handlethe additional load? As infrastructure consoli-dation and data center centralization is becom-ing a trend, you’ll be running moreapplications over your WAN links. Is yourservice provider geared to provide you morebandwidth as and when you add more applica-tions? This may not be much of an issue in caseof a large service provider offering you con-nectivity in your head office. The serviceprovider could give you Bandwidth on De-mand facilities, allowing you to scale up asmuch as you need and charge you only for theduration when you really used it. The troubleagain comes in branch offices. Is the local serviceprovider for your branch office geared to provide morebandwidth? Again, we’ve seen cases where the serviceprovider is just not able to offer this facility.
Even if a WAN service provider does promise such
facility, then the next thing you must check is how longwould the service provider take to upgrade your band-width. Would the service provider offer Bandwidth onDemand, or would there be a bureaucratic process ofapplying for additional bandwidth?
How many service providers?The interesting thing we found in oursurvey was that a majority of the re-spondents were using two serrviceproviders. However, there were a sig-nificant 28% of them who were usingthree to four service providers.Yourchoice of a service provider dependsupon a number of things. One ofcourse is reach. Is your serviceprovider able to offer you connectivityacross all your branch offices? Evenif the service provider is, then the nextquestion is related to availability. Is
How many service providers are you using for your WANconnectivity?
How satisfied are you with the service offered byyour WAN service provider(s)?
No answer 2%
One22%
Two37%
Three 13%
Four 15%
60%
40%
20%
0%
1 Not satisfied
Highly satisfied
2 3
4 5
Other 11%
Cover Story%
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it worth risking giving your complete WAN infrastruc-ture to a single service provider? What if the serviceprovider’s links were to fail? How many redundantpaths does the provider have to ensure that your con-nectivity doesn’t get hampered? In some cases, it mightmake sense to go with more than one. Some companieswe know of have outsourced the complete WAN infra-structure management to a single service provider. Theservice provider in turn ties up with other serviceproviders to offer redundancy, availability, etc.
B/W Optimization AppliancesWAN optimization has been one the most talked abouttecnologies for the past year. It is basically a collectionof techniques to enhance the performance of applica-tions over your WAN. A WAN optimization applianceuses a combination of various techniques like compres-sion, TCP optimization, WAFS, caching, SSL accelera-tion, etc. Strangely, despite all the hype, we didn’t get avery enthusiastic response on using WAN optimizationappliances. In our survey only 15% of respondents saidthey were planning to deploy a WAN optimization solu-tion in near future, while 47% said they had no plans ofdoing so at all. Those who had deployed such solutionsdid manage to save bandwidth. About 13% of the respon-dents said that they had managed to save 20--30% of theirbandwidth, while another 10% saved 30--40% after de-ploying a WAN optimizer. Most of the bandwidth shap-ing is achieved through policy-driven approach i.e. youcan limit which users, or application or an IP can con-
sume how much bandwidth in a particulartime.
Before deploying a WAN optimizationsolution it’s very important to what exactlyis going on your WAN. If you are accessingERP or SAP application over the WAN, youmight be better off deploying a ApplicationAccelerator than WAN optimizer.
WAN optimization has also made a markin DR, as an enterprise needs to backuphuge volumes of data every day at a remotelocation through a WAN. Again, to handlemany enterprises deploy large WAN linksbetween the remote DR site and data cen-ter. In many cases data replication cannotbe postponed to non-peak hours andbackup has to be performed every hour or
so. WAN optimization appliances improve the time taken
to transfer data by using techniques like data reduction,where appliance constantly monitors data flowing acrossand if it encounters repetitive data, it will provide it lo-cally. By reducing the amount of repetitive data sent,WAN traffic is significantly reduced.
In Compression, appliance uses a common compres-sion algorithm to remove extra information from the traf-fic before it is transmitted. The information isreconstituted at the destination using that same algo-rithm and there is no synchronization between two ends.With this technique data transmitted over WAN is re-duced link, but has limitations on how much bandwidthreduction it can achieve by itself–-and has minimal im-pact on latency. Another commonly used technique iscaching in which at both ends data transmitted is in-spected and the appliance stores all duplicate data lo-
68 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
How difficult is an issue defining SLAs with yourWAN service provider?
Have you ever faced a breach of SLA by your WANservice provider?
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%1
Not Difficult
% R
espo
nses
Very Difficult
4% 9%
41%
22%
7%
2 3 45
No 59%
Yes 37%
No Answer 4%
Cover Story
��
cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:05 PM Page 20
in improving the response time of applications.
Other Optimization TechniquesWAN optimization appliances have just come,but companies have been following other tech-niques to optimze their bandwidth. On top of thelist in our survey was Continuous monitoring ofWAN traffic and usage of policies for Bandwidthprioritization, access control, and policy rout-ing. Some respondents even said that creatinguser awareness worked well for them.
SLA ManagementTo achieve acceptable levels of quality, uptime,latency, packet loss, SLAs play an importantrole. In our survey, a large number of respon-dents found it difficult to define SLAs with theirservice providers. Guaranteed uptime andpenalty for downtime were the top two itemsthat must be addressed in a SLA agreement.Many respondents said SLAs should have real-istic parameters for e.g. if a branch office is inremote geographic location with limited con-nectivity, then most WAN service providers willshy away from uptime clause in such a situation.Others must have clauses including last milesupport, response time, escalation matrix, andclear definition of problem resolving timeframe,followed by penalties if not met.
About 37% of the respondents in our surveysaid that they have faced a breach of SLA withtheir WAN service provider while 59% werehappy customers. When asked how did theydeal with breach in SLA, most respondentssaid discussions with service providers weregood enough to resolve the issue while somesaid they asked service providers for compen-sation. When asked what was nature of thebreach, a part of respondents refused to dis-close, while some said that the serviceprovider was ‘ not able to meet committed up-time.’ Other responses included poor per-formance, packet loss, and slow responsetime.
VPN ConnectivitySecurity becomes extremely important when
72 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
We’re using both site-to-site and access VPN 22%
15%
44%
15%
4%
8%
0%
48%
9%
24%
11%
We’re using access VPN for mobile users
We’re using site-to-site VPN
We don’t have VPN connectivity
No answer
Others
Other 13%
Security22%
Bandwidth fluctuations leadto performance issues
52%
No answer13%
VoIP
Our core business applications
Web
No answer
Are you using VPN connectivity in your enterprise?If so, what type?
Which applications are you accessing over yourVPN?
What’s the key challenge you’re facing with yourVPN connectivity?
Cover Story
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cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:06 PM Page 22
organizations avail Internet for WAN connectivity. Insuch cases, VPN is one option to consider. In our sur-vey, 44% of the respondents said that they were usingonly site-to-site VPNs, while another 22% said they wereusing both site-to-site and access VPN for mobile users.Another 15% were not using VPN at all. About 48% ofthe respondents were using VPNs to access their corebusiness applications while email and web were theother two applications being accessed via VPN.
The biggest issue that CIOs seem to be facing inVPNs is bandwidth fluctuations, which lead to perform-ance issues. This is an even bigger issue than security,which came as the second most important issue, but farbehind the first one.
Types of VPNIPSec VPN: initially developed for site-to-site connec-tivity, it is now largely used by the enterprises in needof extra security and those who have geographicallydispersed employees. IPSec VPNs are mostly used inaddition to MPLS VPNS, works complementary toMPLS VPNs. IPSec allows establishment of a VPN viaInternet and can provide secure gateway to gateway
and host to gateway connections. IPSEC encryptspackets before transmissions and also validates data byauthentication of the source sending the packets.
A recent development in IPSec is DMVPNs (Dy-namic Multipoint VPN). In this using IPSec dynamictunnels can be created as and when required betweenSpoke-to-Spoke or Hub-to-Spoke. Direct spoke-to-spoke connection means two branch offices can com-municate with each other, without any traffic going toHO. It only modifies the configuration files of IPSec tun-nel not the whole tunnel.
SSL VPNSSL VPNs are deployed in Client-less environment andmostly used for connecting roadwarriors to the office. Itworks well when you don’t have much control over theend devices. In our survey ' these many ' respondentssaid they are using VPNs for connecting roadwarriors tothe corporate network. With SSL Enterprises you canlimit access to specific resources, web applications etc.SSL at times is also used with IPsec.
Overall WAN mgmt is becoming increasingly criticalfor organizations, and requires constant attention.
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�
F5 WANJet WANJet operates at layer 4 and usesSession Matrix technology to deliv-er LAN like performance over theWAN. It can accelerate applicationssuch as file transfer, client-servercore business applications, datareplication, email, etc. It also sup-ports site-to-site SSL encryption,TCP optimization, QoS traffic shap-ing, and application proxy supportfor CIFS.
Blue CoatBlue Coat's ProxySG WANoptimization applianceprovides Internet securityfunctions such as web fil-tering, logging, web anti-virus, spyware blocking,and peer-to-peer blocking.As a result organizationscan consolidate WAN opti-mization and web securityinto one appliance.
Silver PeakSilver Peak NX is a WAN accel-eration solution. It uses tech-niques like data reduction, com-pression, QoS, hardware levelIPSec Encryption, and loss mit-igation to provide high WANspeeds. It operates at networklayer of ISO stack. It uses disk-based data reduction forincreasing performance andsuperior memory retention.
Cover Story
A few WAN Optimization Appliances
cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:07 PM Page 23
76 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Software applications are the backbone of any organiza-
tion’s commercial activities. Irrespective of size, each
company depends on various software applications to
accomplish every aspect of their business in today’s global
world. Companies invest millions on implementing the best
possible enterprise software in their premises. But soon after
deployment, unless applications are managed continuously, it
can lead to downtime, causing business loss.
Rising complexity intensifies the challenge of optimizing
application performance. Enterprise application management
brings its own share of complex issues and challenges, the
sheer abundance of them being the most pertinent. With IT
teams juggling demands of hundreds of internally imple-
mented applications, it is not easy to manage and utilize them
to the optimum level. Importantly once an application has
been deployed it is costly and also difficult to make material
changes to the application.
The ultimate result is that while enterprise applications
continue to become more important to the operation of the
business, issues with their performance become more preva-
lent and difficult to identify, and resolve. Recognizing the im-
portance of proper monitoring and management of
applications, we will focus on some of the best available tools
for application management and performance monitoring
HHooww ttoo KKeeeepp yyoouurr AApppplliiccaattiioonnss HHeeaalltthhyyHHooww ttoo KKeeeepp yyoouurr AApppplliiccaattiioonnss HHeeaalltthhyy
Rahul Sah, Rakesh Sharma and Saurangshu Kanunjna
Enterprise Solutions
enterprise implementation_app mgmt_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:35 PM Page 68
and also tell you some of the best practices for application man-
agement.
An application monitoring tool can be a piece of software
or an appliance that continuously monitors, diagnoses and in-
forms about problems that slow down applications you are
running.
Application performance relates to the speed as in how fast
transactions are completed or the information that is getting
delivered to the end user by the application via a particular net-
work, application and Web services infrastructure. The idea
here is to detect and resolve the problem before users start ex-
periencing any difficulties or poor performance.
Database optimization toolsWith increasing size of data, databases tend to get sluggish
over time. Database optimization tools are used to improve
their performance. As the size of a database increases, it results
in a series of logs to be created; this in turn increases the over-
head. These tools try to do diagnostics for the database by re-
viewing parameters such as log, cache size and shared pool
size. Such tools help the DBA to tune up the performance of the
database along with the option of monitoring the database
and its space consumption for logs and buffer.
For performance tuning, these tools follow different algo-
rithms based on the type of database server. For eg, a tool
called, DB Tuning Expert for Oracle, tunes up the crucial pa-
rameters in Oracle to get optimal performance. Also by re-
claiming the unused space in data storage and by clearing up
the log file, database performance can be improved.
Web application optimization toolsWhenever Web application optimization is referred, most of us
confuse it with Web optimization appliances. But there are
software tools available that perform the same task. Cache con-
trol is one technique used by such tools for optimizing web
apps. Using cache control tools you can limit cache size, cre-
ate rules for objects residing in cache to be updated or deleted,
and synchronize cache memory spread across multiple
servers. HTTP Compression is one of the most popularly used
techniques for optimizing Web based apps over the WAN. It can
be done at Web server as well as browser level. At server level
you can either keep Web content in a pre-compressed format
or you can use a third party software to dynamically compress
the content.
Quest Management Suite for SQL Server DBAs now have to cope with ever increasing responsibilities of
managing the SQL Servers, as more and more business critical
application data gets stored on them. They have to meet the
challenge of managing the database environment that not
only increase in volume but also increase in complexity. The
Quest Management Suite is a set of tools that can help a DBA
to manage, monitor and diagnose problems on his SQL Server.
The suite consists of following:
● LiteSpeed, which is a backup and recovery tool.
● Capacity Manager, which is storage and resource
planning tool
● Spotlight, a real-time performance diagnostic tool.
Here we will focus on Spotlight and see how a DBA can
benefit from the performance monitoring of the SQL Server. ��
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SpotlightA database administrator al-
ways tries to keep the database
up and running, but he can
never be sure about bottlenecks
that would hamper database
performance. In such a sce-
nario, using manual techniques
to diagnose and resolve the bot-
tleneck becomes hard for the
DBA. QuestSoftware’s Spotlight
on SQL Server is a tool that can
help a DBA in resolving such
bottlenecks, and also help him
to monitor the SQL Server, to
identify and eliminate the situ-
ations where such bottlenecks
could arise. Spotlight is a data-
base performance-monitoring
tool that allows a DBA to ob-
serve the actual database activ-
ity on a real time basis in a
graphical interface.
Configuration and useFor configuring Spotlight for the SQL Server, you have to spec-
ify a working database that would be used by Spotlight to main-
tain monitoring counters and logs. When the configuration
step has been completed, a DBA can create connections to the
SQL Server that Spotlight would
monitor for performance. On the
main screen, Spotlight presents a
graphical representation of activities
occurring amongst the components
of SQL Server. The DBA can view
components such as disk storage,
memory and SQL processes on the
main screen and also view data flow
rates amongst these components.
The representation of database
server activities by Spotlight is done
on a real-time basis. So, whenever
any bottleneck is about to occur, the
DBA monitoring the server over Spot-
light can determine the problem area
and resolve it even before the bottle-
neck takes effect.
Spotlight also does a calibration
process periodically that automati-
cally sets a baseline for the server-
The memory view of the server instance shows the buffer cache information along with
graphs for Hit Rates and Page Allocation on time scale
Spotlight shows the activities of disk, memory and SQL processes in real-time for perform-
ance monitoring. Also the I/O speed is tracked for logical and physical data reads
��
enterprise implementation_app mgmt_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:30 PM Page 70
Enterprise Solutions
based on performance parame-
ters such as Cache Hit Ratio, La-
tency Period, etc. This allows it to
set the speed of internal data flow
and other activity counters like
cache size, log buffer size, etc.
When this threshold gets crossed,
it sends an alert upon which the
DBA can take appropriate action.
The Buffer Cache Hit Ratio
shows the percentage of the logi-
cal reads satisfied by the data al-
ready in Buffer Cache. The DBA
had to calculate these ratios
through some SQL queries or
through native tools earlier, but
with Spotlight he can have this in-
formation on real-time basis. This
is critical information, and as the
Hit Ratio goes down, the DBA can
increase or clear the cache to maintain performance.
Spotlight also offers the option of viewing status and
graphs for memory, SQL activities and database. Under Mem-
ory view, the buffer cache of each database object and the page
allocation can be monitored. The SQL Activity view shows the
current response time for data queries, Cache Hit rates and
CPU utilization information in graphical format. Spotlight also
maintains an Error log, which can be used to pinpoint the rea-
son for any server bottleneck. The DBA can also keep record of
how many active sessions are there to the server and how many
users are currently accessing the server. Spotlight is an impor-
tant tool for a DBA to keep the database server up and running,
by eliminating bottlenecks before they can happen.
Chroniker AppWatch At times system administrators receive the message that an
application is taking more than the required time to respond
even though the database and application are running fine.
Hence, it becomes difficult to identify where actually the appli-
cation is taking time to respond.
Chroniker AppWatch provides you with a solution for the
same. It’s a performance testing software that allows you to
monitor the application, tells you its response time and what
the end user experience is. Using this software, one can easily
find the exact point where the application is taking time. For
example, does it take time to load the application or is it taking
time in querying the database. It also provides you with ‘analy-
sis reports’ such as SLA reports. It automatically generates re-
ports such as the ‘n’ slowest tasks per month, 10 least available
tasks per month, etc.
The interesting fact about this software is that it can simu-
late the real user behavior. It automatically finds icons on the
With the help of AppWatch one can view the error message, which will be exactly what the
user will be facing
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��
enterprise implementation_app mgmt_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:30 PM Page 71
Enterprise Solutions
82 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
desktop even if the position of the icon is changed, as it cap-
tures and recognizes a Windows object just as a human does.
Also when a Web page is getting loaded, you can configure the
software to wait until the page is fully loaded so that a partic-
ular action can be taken, such as putting search string after the
required text box is loaded completely. Moreover, its user
friendly interface lets you design test suites without having
prior scripting knowledge.
Here, we show how it can be done. Before starting the de-
sign of the test suite, one has to note down what steps will
evolve during the test. For example, to open a particular appli-
cation you have to find the respective shortcut on the desktop
and then double click on it. For writing the test suite, open up
the ‘Scenario Builder’ form and Start > All Programs >
Chroniker > Scenario Station.
For convenience, we will load an already written script,
which can be found under the ‘script’ directory named ‘Nrg-
Website.csc.’ Save it by another name say ‘IExplorer.’ Now for
Following best practices provide a frame-work for achieving results efficiently. Right now application performance man-agement is more of reactive trou-bleshooting than proactive. So when anapplication slowdown is reported, the ITstaff determines the cause behind theproblem and tries to minimize the oper-ational and business impact from theslowdown. However, there are measuresthat can be taken to make the process ofapplication management more proactive.Here are a few practices that can be
adopted: Step 1: Baseline- Under normal condi-tions both network and individually crit-ical applications should be baselined todetermine performance parameters.Whenever an application performanceproblem is reported, the baseline can in-stantly offer data for comparison.Step 2: Application Flow Analysis- Thisinvolves analyzing the application duringthe flow level, i.e. during an applicationconversation, as opposed to packet leveland then presenting the summary statis-
tic on the most important aspects of itsperformance. Hence, by interpretingflow-level data into actionable informa-tion it helps maximize efficiency and min-imize response time. Step 3: Categorizing and isolating theproblem – It’s important to first under-stand the type of problem and then cate-gorize it for isolation. There can beseveral reasons for the problem, hencecategorization is important.
Causes for trouble can be applicationcode, which if written inefficiently is
Best Practices in Application Management
Using the Chroniker AppWatch browser interface one can remotely keep track of all the scenarios including the overall status
enterprise implementation_app mgmt_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:31 PM Page 72
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using this test suite remotely, one needs to register it to
‘Chroniker base’. For this, go to Tools menu and then click on
‘Register Scenario’. Now open Internet Explorer on any other
computer which is attached to the same network and open the
page http://<ip-address>:8888/, where ‘<ip-address>’ is the
IP of the system where Chroniker software is installed. When
the Web page gets loaded, navigate to Modules > Applications.
Here, all scenarios are listed along with the number of trans-
actions they have and their status. Moreover, when an applica-
tion fails to execute, you can view the screen shot of the page
where the error has occurred.
To run the scenario immediately, click on ‘Run this sce-
nario now’ icon on the row where scenarios are listed. A win-
dow will appear which will show you results such as response
time, after executing the scenario.
End user measurementA key concern for any organization is effective maintenance
of applications so that the end user doesn’t face any problems
while using them. To maintain high level of online service
quality, organizations must adopt an application and service
management strategy that helps companies ensure that end
users receive the best possible experience while using them.
Some key areas must be addressed from the user perspective
are: capabilities to measure application performance and user
experience; and understanding of the usage level, usage pat-
tern, and content analysis, right down to the individual user
level. Like wise, there can be several other methods to deter-
mine key parameters of an application from an end-user per-
spective. For eg, user performance measurement can enable
real time monitoring of user activities and individual user ac-
tivity can be analyzed for problem detection and diagnosis for
quick resolution. Live Session Capture and Replay helps to
capture, search and store each end user’s actual Web
experience.
One can track what a user did and how the system re-
sponded. Report on the service level of synthetic transaction
by business processes, geographic location or time period is
again one of the key methods to understand the end user per-
spective. Another key point is capacity determination so as to
identify bottlenecks such as ineffective load balancing and
poorly performing servers.
Understanding the end user perspective and managing the
same result in several benefits for the organization, such as
maximizing application productivity or profit potential by un-
derstanding user behavior, think-time and navigation path.
Also you can learn how your users are using the application
through usage reports and trend analysis. By optimizing the
application potential you will be enhancing overall user expe-
rience. Another key benefit is the practice of proactive service
level management by aligning IT service delivery to initia-
tives and goals.
bound to create a negative impact, irre-spective of whether the application istransactional or streaming in nature orperforms bulk file transfer. The problemwill be evident if monitored by an appli-cation management system. Anothercause for the problem could be networkinfrastructure.
Before application performancemanagement solutions came into pic-ture, inadequate bandwidth was consid-ered to be the primary cause of poorapplication performance. But now withcompanies investing significantly onbandwidth improvement it has beenclearly found out that this doesn’t have
any connection with poor applicationperformance.
Another reason for the problemcould be understanding of protocols. Attimes inefficient network protocol is be-hind an application performance prob-lem. An application performancemanagement tool can help determinesuch kind of issues and facilitate betterunderstanding of how a protocol works.This in turn helps developers to tune theprotocol, making it better for the appli-cation.
Sometimes an underpoweredserver, outdated operating system,clients running unauthorized software,
or cycle – consuming activities such asunscheduled backups, can also be thesource of slow application performance.Application performance tools can iden-tify this problem and intimate the IT staffabout the same.
The advanced application manage-ment solution allows taking data whichthey generate and convert them into amore illustrated, comprehensive reportwhich helps the IT team to maintain atrack record of the behavior of certainapplications. These in turn help themunderstand the applications and deviceproper maintenance schedule depend-ing on their behavior.
�
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Developer
84 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Implementing Ajax with ZKThe ZK framework allows you to create Ajax-based Web applications, without even requiring to write complexJavaScript.We’ll create a web application and integrate it with business logic in this article
Rahul Sah
With the advent of Web 2.0, the
Web browser has become a
platform for delivering busi-
ness applications to users and we have ably
matched the functionalities that only thick
client software could exhibit.
The benefits of delivering applications
over the Web rather than distributing them
as stand-alone desktop applications are
aplenty, but for that we need to write com-
plex client-side JavaScripts.
Ajax technology, as part of Web 2.0,
came as a boon to developers to create dy-
namic and responsive interfaces, but writ-
ing JavaScripts was still an overhead.The
answer to this problem comes as ZK, which
is an Open Source Ajax framework that
allows Java Web developers to create rich
Web applications, quite easily.
ZK frameworkZK’s Ajax engine consists of both client
and server side components that commu-
nicate with each other.The framework
uses JavaScript but the complexity to im-
plement an Ajax framework has been con-
cealed from the Web developers.ZK has
two sets of interface components, one is
based on XUL (XML User interface Lan-
guage) and other is based on XUML (XML
User interface Markup Language).The
framework has been explained earlier in
the March ’07 issue of PCQuest.
In this article, we will see how to develop a
Web application, using ZK framework and
how it can be integrated with business
logic.
ZK in actionOn this month’s PCQ Extreme DVD, we
have provided the RC 3 release of the ZK
framework.We will be using Eclipse as IDE
and Tomcat 5.5 as the Web server.
Create a new Web project, using Eclipse
and name it as ZKdemo.Extract the zk-
bin-3.0.0-RC.zip archive at ZK_DIR.Now,
copy the “z*”jar files from ZK_DIR/
dist/lib folder to your application’s WEB-
INF/lib folder.You would also be required
to import bsh.jar from ZK_DIR/
dist/lib/ext folder to your application’s
WEB-INF/lob folder.You can also import
commons-io.jar, if your application would
be using them to upload files.
We now have to register the ZK frame-
work engine with our Web application.The
ZK engine has servlets for ZK-based pages
and also to handle client-server communi-
cations.By inserting the following code
snippet into the web.xml file, we can regis-
ter the loader that evaluates ZK-based
pages and also do the mapping of .zul and
.zhtml pages to the servlet.
<servlet>
<servlet-name>zkLoader</servlet-name>
<servlet-class> org.zkoss.zk.ui.http.Dhtm-
lLayoutServlet </servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>update-uri</param-name>
<param-value>/zkau</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>zkLoader</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.zul</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>zkLoader</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.zhtml</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
As Ajax does asynchronous com-
Applies To: Web developers
USP: Create rich user interfaces
for your applications
Primary Link: http://www.zkoss.
org/download/
Keywords: ZK Ajax framework
PCQ Extreme DVD: system/
DIRECT HIT!
ZK jars required by application are placed
in WEB-INF/lib folder ��
zk for java_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:21 PM Page 76
Developer
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munication between client and server, we
need to register the asynchronous update
engine for ZK , by inserting following code
snippet into web.xml of our Web app.
<servlet>
<servlet-name>auEngine</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
org.zkoss.zk.au.http.DhtmlUpdate-
Servlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>auEngine</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/zkau/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Now, we can head start with creating
our ZUML pages for our app.Create a new
file in the ZKdemo folder and name it as
hello.zul.Adding the following code snip-
pet will make our first page.The first line
sets the title for the browser window, while
the code after that creates a window titled
‘Hello’ within the HTML page.
<?page title="ZK try out"?>
<window title="Hello">
Hello ZK Demo Page!!!
</window>
To test our application, build and place
the war file in Tomcat’s webapps directory.
Start the Tomcat server (considering that
your server’s listening port is 8080) and go
to http:// localhost:8080/ ZKdemo/
hello.zul.
If all is well, that is if we’ve
successfully registered the ZK Ajax engine
in web.xml and imported all necessary jar
files required by the framework, then we
will see the Hello message on our browser.
Business logic integrationLet’s move ahead and bring some interac-
tion between our interface and the back-
end.Say, we have to display a list of cities
to our users for selection and we populate
that through a database.We will create a
Java Bean named City.java to represent the
city name.
public class City
{
private String _cityName;
public City(String cityName)
{_cityName = cityName;}
public String getCityName()
{ return _cityName; }
public void setCityName(String name)
{ _cityName = name; }
}
Now, we will create a manager for City
that will do Add and List operations for
the City instance and name it as CityMan-
ager.java.
public class CityManager
{
private List<City> _cities = new
LinkedList<City>();
public List<City> listCities() { return
_cities; }
public void addCity(City city) {
_cities.add(city); }
}
In this script, we will use a POJO
retrieved by a “Manager” object, which
will fetch and display the
list. If we were supposed to
use JavaScript, that process
would have been a bit com-
plex to fetch the list as Java
Collection object and iterat-
ing on that to produce the
list. But with ZK, we have a
‘forEach’ attribute to do the
iterations on the Cities and
display that list.
The following code snip-
pet does this task. Here we
have hard-coded the city
names into the City object by
using the addCity() method
of the manager, but in real application
scenarios, the object would be returning
the cities list from a database table.
<window>
<zscript>
import City;
import CityManager;
manager=new CityManager();
manager.addCity(new City("Calcutta"));
manager.addCity(new City("Mumbai"));
manager.addCity(new City("New Delhi"));
manager.addCity(new City("Raipur"));
cities = manager.listCities();
</zscript>
Select a City: <listbox mold="select">
<listitem forEach="${cities}"
label="${each.cityName}"
value="${each}"/>
</listbox>
</window>
The script for ZK is enclosed between
<zscript> tags. In the DVD, along with the
ZK binary, you’ll see that we’ve placed this
script in a tabbed window.The final page
layout has some examples displayed up
from the demo code that ZK provides.
Also it is advisable to download the devel-
opers guide from the site as a handy refer-
ence to ZK framework.
Tab1 shows the city list as a result of the script code
we created �
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In ASP.NET 2.0, we saw the introduc-
tion of a number of ‘smart’ controls –
like GridView, DetailsView, the Login
and Navigation Control Set, to name a few.
These allow developers to get productive
very quickly by providing a set of features
that are most commonly used in their spe-
cific scenario.For instance, by simply
dropping in a Login or CreateUserWizard
control onto a Web page, a developer could
start building in security features to the
site.Keeping the same tradition alive,
ASP.NET ‘Futures’ release – an upcoming
version of the popular ASP.NET program-
ming stack – has a number of new controls
as well. In this article, we take a look at the
new Dynamic Data controls.
One of the most common tasks in cre-
ating Web pages is displaying data from a
database in a table to the user. In ASP.NET
2.0, the GridView and SQLDataSource con-
trols were introduced that allowed devel-
opers to quickly create a table displaying
results of a query.However, in Dynamic
Data controls, even this has been dis-
pensed with.
All these controls work on the principle
of database schema directly.That is to say,
if you create Web pages that map directly
to objects in your database, you can get
the pages to work without writing any
CRUD level code at all. For instance, in
case you have a table called ‘authors’ in
your database and you create a new Web
page called ‘authors.aspx’ in your website,
you will automatically get a page that
contains all data manipulation features
for that table. But before we get into that,
let’s take a look at how to proceed.
If you have Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
or above and have installed the ASP.NET
Futures stack, create a new website from
the Dynamic Data Web template. Open up
the Web.config of the site and in the
<connection-
Strings> section
add a connection
string to a database
on your machine.
Once this is done,
right click the solu-
tion and select ‘Add
New Item…’ In the
template box, in-
stead of selecting a
Web form, select
‘Dynamic Data Web-
form.’ Now name the
ASP.NET page based
on a table or view in
your database. For
instance, you can call it ‘authors.aspx’ if
there is a table called ‘authors.’
By default, the page contains a
Dynamic AutoData control. However, for
this case, delete the control and drop in a
Dynamic List control on the page. Press
Ctrl-F5 to run the page.When the
browser opens, you will see that the page
contains a GridView with sort, pagination
and edit/update functionality.And all
this without writing a single line of code.
On the page, drop in a Dynamic Details
control and refresh it in the browser.You
will see that the GridView now has a De-
tailsview also attached to it that displays-
details of the row selected.
We can now go ahead and add a
Dynamic Filter control on the page as well.
This control needs at least one property to
be set, called the ColumnName.This is the
column on which filtration will happen in
the Dynamic List control.You can also
change the appearance of the filter from
the default drop down to a radio or list as
well, by supplying the FilterType property.
For instance, to filter on a column called
contract and show it as radio buttons in-
stead of a drop down, the control would
look like this:
Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET FuturesThe ASP.NET Futures stack contains a new set of controls that can be used to create Web pages that can manipulate databases with even lesser code
Vinod Unny, Enterprise InfoTech
Applies To: Advanced .NET
developers
USP: Create Ajax enabled web-
sites on the fly
Primary Link: http://www.microsoft.
com/downloads/details.aspx?
Google Keywords: ASP.Futures
DIRECT HIT!
��
The output of the DynamicAutoData control. Note the name of
the ASPX page and the functionality that is offered
SERIES
PART III
VS 08
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<asp:DynamicFilter ID="DynamicFilter1"
runat="server" ColumnName="contract"
FilterStyle="Radio" />
You can also create a RSS feed for
the data in the table for this page,
so that users can subscribe to be
informed of any changes in the table.
All you need to do is drop a Dynamic
RSS Link control on the page and sub-
scribe to the URL that it creates.
The Dynamic Data controls also let you
display a navigation menu of other dy-
namic data driven pages.Say you have
created a number of table manipulation
pages for different tables in your database.
Instead of statically linking them in every
page,drop in a Dynamic Navigator control
on the pages.These will then automatically
list the Dynamic Data pages in your site.
Customizing controlsYou can very easily customize the look and
feel of the output from controls by supply-
ing a template to them.For instance, in
case you wish to
customize the look of
the Dynamic List
control, simply supply a
template GridView, like
this:
<asp:GridView
ID="GridView1"
runat="server" Back-
Color="White"
BorderColor="#E7E7FF"
BorderStyle="None"
BorderWidth="1px"
CellPadding="3"
GridLines="Horizon-
tal">
<RowStyle Back-
Color="#E7E7FF" Fore-
Color="#4A3C8C" />
<PagerStyle Back-
Color="#E7E7FF" ForeColor="#4A3C8C" />
<SelectedRowStyle
BackColor="#738A9C"
ForeColor="#F7F7F7" />
<HeaderStyle BackColor="#4A3C8C"
Font-Bold="True" ForeColor="#F7F7F7" />
<AlternatingRowStyle
BackColor="#F7F7F7" />
</asp:GridView>
<asp:DynamicList ID="DynamicList1"
runat="server" ControlID="GridView1" />
Note that the ControlID property of
the DynamicList is set to the ID of the
GridView to use as a template.You can
do this for all other Dynamic controls as
well – DetailsView for Dynamic Details,
Hyperlink for Dynamic RSS, Menu for
Dynamic Navigator and so on.
Adding CodeMost of the controls have a number of
methods that can be used to customize the
output even further.For instance, the Dy-
namic List control by default returns all
the columns of the table.However to cus-
tomize the output, you can override a
method called GetColumns like this:
public override IEnumerable Get-
Columns()
{
return new object[]
{
new DynamicDataColumn
(
"Full Name",
delegate { return EvalS("au_fname")
+ " " + EvalS("au_lname"); }
),
"City",
"State"
};
}
This changes the output of the control
with a new column called Full Name that
shows the concatenated name of the au-
thor and the city and state fields only.
Dynamic Auto DataThis is the control that does everything
the above controls do on a single page.
This gets created automatically on the
page when you create a new table based
page and when you view it you will get all
the functionality for table manipulation
you need on the page without writing
even a single line of code. This is a very
powerful and useful control that lets you
become much more productive in a mat-
ter of seconds rather than the hours that
used to be taken earlier to do something
like this.
All in all, the Dynamic data controls
are a huge leap forward in making mun-
dane database manipulation Web pages
easier and quicker to create. This is a
welcome step in the right direction and
will be a great addition to the ASP.NET
stack. �
A custom data page using different dynamic data
controls
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Efficient Unit-testing in JavaWith AgitarOne developers can now do unit testing of their Java code modules very quickly, and eliminate allerrors effectively
Rahul Sah
Unit testing is a practice that de-
velopers use to test their code
modules in isolation to make
sure that each module does what it’s sup-
posed to. JUnit is an Open Source frame-
work which helps in unit testing,
specifically coded on the Java platform.
Developers just have to determine the
test cases and create JUnit tests for their
code modules.
In a typical setup, developers don’t
prefer this added burden of unit-testing
on their shoulders, as they feel that this
should be done by the testing division.
They often overlook the benefits of doing
unit-testing at developmental stage, be-
cause it requires too much work. This
used to make it extremely difficult to
convince developers to do unit-testing at
their end.
Now, there’s a tool that has been in-
troduced by Agitar, called Agitar One,
which creates JUnit tests automatically
for code modules and also prepares the
test cases for them. This significantly re-
duces the time required for unit testing,
enabling an organization to convince its
developers to take up the job.
AgitarOne steps inAs we mentioned,AgitarOne is a unit-
testing software for enterprises who are
engaged in Java-based development. Pro-
ject managers can use it at developmental
stage so that their developers can imple-
ment unit-testing.
It is a server-based model and can ex-
ecute through the code modules to test
how the given code will perform under
normal as well as exceptional conditions.
AgitarOne relieves the developer by gen-
erating several test-cases for code mod-
ules, even for those code patterns which
developers find tedious to create the JU-
nit tests for and normally skip when do-
ing the task, manually.
Once a module is put under test cre-
ation,AgitarOne reads through the code,
creates the test on-the-fly and generates
the report based on the results, observing
which lines of code were executed and
which lines were excluded.Any anomalies
in the code can easily be caught from these
reports.
The test values that AgitarOne uses are
based on random generation of values for
variables and functions.When any test
fails,AgitarOne reports the sequence of
functions and values passed to them so
that a developer may trace through the
code to evaluate the reason why a particu-
lar code couldn’t handle
the value, as per expecta-
tion. Like this, quality
can be ensured for a
code module right from
the development
process.
Installation andsetup
AgitarOne is based
on Eclipse IDE and it
comes packaged with
it.Alternatively, it can
also be installed sepa-
rately as a plug-in to an
existing Eclipse IDE. In
the packaged version, Tomcat server is au-
tomatically configured for AgitarOne and
the client machines can access AgitarOne’s
Dashboard remotely.
Once the server and clients have been
configured, it’s just a few clicks of process
for developers to automate the unit-test-
ing process for their code modules.
The developer has to select his project
or a class-file and through Agitar’s drop-
down menu he can select to create tests,
agitate the code, run the code-rule or gen-
Applies To: Java developers
USP: JUnit generation and code-
rule enforcement
Price: $50,000 per year
Primary Link: www.agitar.com/
products/downloads/
Keywords: AgitarOne
DIRECT HIT!
Agitar’s dashboard gives an overall summary of the project
and detailed reports on each class and its risk-analysis ��
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erate the Dashboard result of the project.
AgitarOne in actionThe software agitates on a given code
module to check for what that code was
intended to do and what it actually does.
Agitation can be described as a process
of creating multiple instances of classes,
and calling all methods of those classes
with a wide array of input data and ob-
serving the results thus generated.
This input data can be randomly
generated by AgitarOne or can be manu-
ally passed by the developer through fac-
tories (user-defined subclasses). Then
it’s up to the developer to check which
observation forwarded by AgitarOne is
not matching the desired behavior and
the reason for it.
For experiencing this agitation
process, let us take a sample project pro-
vided with AgitarOne.We will try
agitating Product class and see the
observations presented by AgitarOne, so
that we are able to assert on a few of
them to validate code behavior.
In the Product class, we have valida-
tion checks for name and price fields.
Where name can’t be more than 20 char-
acters and price field can have a value
between 0 and 1000.
To start the agitation process on
Product class, select Product.java and
click on Agitate toolbar button or press
Ctrl+F9. Now, in the editor window for
Product.java, we can see in the Code
Coverage style the number of times a
particular line of code has been exe-
cuted. The red indicates that some lines
have not been touched by control flow. In
AgitarOne Server view, status and cover-
age (indicates what percent of the code
lines have been executed) is displayed.
The Observations view indicates
where the problems may be lying with
the code module, in our case the Product
class. Notice the following observation
listing for the Product class.
0 <= this.getName().length() <= 46
As we had defined that a name can’t
be more than 20 characters long, in this
observation we can see that AgitarOne
was able to pass more than 20 characters
long values to the field ‘name’. This
means a validation for that is not being
executed or is being ignored by the pro-
gram control during execution.
Now the developer can directly pre-
sume that the validateName() method of
the code is not being called when set-
Name() method passes the value for
name field. By changing the setName
method to look as following code snip-
pet we can eliminate the error.
public void setName(String name)
throws IllegalArgumentException {
validateName(name);
this.name = name;
}
When we again agitate the Product
class, under the Observations view, we
see a modified observation listed. The
observation for getName() has also been
modified.
Similarly, the developer can make as-
sessment for other observations. He can
assert an observation to hold true for a
situation and can again run
agitation to check the code behavior.
This way a developer, who is well
familiar with his code, can at develop-
mental stage only eliminate possible
redundant errors, by using AgitarOne.
The functionality of Dashboard is an
added advantage, both for a developer
and the project leader.As in Dashboard,
the whole coverage percentage of the
projects’ classes, their progress and the
highest risk classes can be viewed.
ConclusionWith the automation of unit-testing, a
developer with the help of AgitarOne can
implement quality code creation, right
from developmental stage onwards.
Hence, enterprises will benefit with
reduced time of testing and developers
will be able to debug their code and
improve productivity, significantly.
Upon agitation the coverage style is represented along the editor code lines and
Observations view shows the various observations from the agitation result �
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Block Offensive Language from your SiteUsing simple PHP code, you can now locate offensive comments posted by anonymous people on your websiteor blog, and remove or rename them
Rakesh Sharma
Lots of websites nowadays have in-
corporated interactive features,
such as blogs, comments, views,
etc. These allow visitors to post their
comments online.While it’s good to have
such features, they can also become a lia-
bility when users start posting offensive
or derogatory comments on the website.
That ultimately affects the website’s repu-
tation.
If you are also struggling to save your
website’s reputation, then here’s a simple
way out.
In this article, we provide you a PHP
code snippet that will help you stop
banned words from being posted on your
website or blog, by anonymous visitors.
First of all, list down all words in a
text file that you want to ban. Then, write
down a function ’check_offensive_
word()’, which will be responsible for
checking each word written on your web-
site for being an offensive word.The code
for the same is as follows:
<?php
function language_filter($string) {
$offensive =
@file("path/to/your/file/bad_lang.dat"
);
foreach ($offensive as $curse_word) {
if
(stristr(trim($string),$curse_word)) {
$length = strlen($curse_word);
for ($i = 1; $i <= $length; $i++)
{
$stars .= "*";
}
$string =
ereg_replace($curse_word,$stars,trim($
string));
$stars = "";
}
}
return $string;
}
?>
When the string is passed to this
function, the string is parsed and
checked for any offensive word that you
have specified in the file ‘bad_lang.dat’. It
takes a word at a time from the string and
checks if the word is present in the
‘bad_lang.dat’. If the word is present in
the list of offensive words then it simply
calculates the length of the word and
replaces it with a sequence of ‘*’s.
The ‘ereg_replace’ is an in-built func-
tion in PHP which replaces offensive
words with the character you define,
which in this case is ‘*’.
For testing this, write the following
code snippet:
<?php
$string = "test for offensive words.";
print language_filter($string);
?>
If you have defined the word ‘offen-
sive’ in your banned words list, then the
output of the above code will be:
Test for ********* words.
This little code will make your web-
pages a little cleaner.
Applies To: PHP developers
USP: Prevent offensive language
from appearing on your site
Primary Link: www.php.net
Keywords: Language filter
DIRECT HIT!
�
The PHP script that you’ll create will check all content on your web page against a
banned list you’ve created. Any matches it finds are automatically replaced with a ‘*’
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Query Style Programming with OrcasDevelopers can now apply standard query operators in their programs using LINQ with Visual Studio 2008(Orcas) to directly access the data objects
Rahul Sah
Microsoft released Visual Stu-
dio 2008 (project Orcas) Beta
2 in July this year, which in-
corporates .NET Framework 3.5. This
new framework adds support for new
Web protocols to build WCF (Windows
Communication Foundation) services
and also provides support for WPF
(Windows Presentation Foundation).
The other noticeable feature is LINQ,
which we will talk about in detail.
LINQ and its featuresLanguage Integrated Query, LINQ, al-
lows standard query operations to be
integrated onto the .NET platform so as
to provide a unified way to query across
objects, database, and XML in a stan-
dard way. LINQ offers compile-time
syntax checking, rich metadata, and Vi-
sual Studio’s IntelliSense, which were
earlier available with only .NET code.
As LINQ is now part of .NET Frame-
work, it allows for standard query oper-
ators to traverse, filter, and update
using any .NET language programming.
The standard query operators allow
queries to be applied to IEnumerable
based information source and allow de-
velopers to use query style syntaxes
(LINQ expressions) for their codes re-
ferring to objects or datasets. The stan-
dard query operators are used for LINQ
to Objects as well, where they can be ap-
plied to all in-memory information.
The power of LINQ is in its extensibil-
ity. LINQ can provide implementations
that work over SQL data sources. LINQ
to SQL translates LINQ-based queries
into SQL database queries. A database-
specific provider then analyses and
transforms these into appropriate
query language for the data store, for
example, Microsoft SQL Server. Let’s see
how LINQ can be used over Objects in
projects and also over SQL for a data-
base reference.
LINQ to ObjectsLINQ to Objects refers to LINQ expres-
sions used for in-memory objects such
as arrays or datasets. To see Language
Integrated Query at work, let’s create a
new project in Visual Studio 2008. Go to
File>New Project and under Project
Type select Visual Basic’s Windows
project of type Windows Form Applica-
tion and name it as LinqDemo1, with
this Form1.vb gets created. In the fol-
lowing example we will try populating a
DataGridView with information on files
in a directory: ‘E:/docs’ in our case. First
drop a DataGridView from Toolbox
pane onto the Form1 and dock it onto
the parent container. Double clicking on
the Form1 will show the code window,
where on Form Load event we will
Applies To: .NET developers
USP: Programming in query
style
Primary Link: msdn2.microsoft
.com/hi-in/vstudio/aa700831.aspx
Keywords: Orcas, LINQ, LINQ to
SQL
DIRECT HIT!
The LinqDemo example lists the file information in directory ‘E:/docs’ upon execution
of application ��
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first try retrieving the file information
of the directory E:/docs. Using LINQ,
we will now write code in query format
to retrieve the file information. The fol-
lowing code snippet does the same; the
file info will be retrieved for the direc-
tory and stored in ‘files’ variable.
Dim files = From file In
My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles("E:\
docs") Order By file Select file
The variable ‘files’ would contain
IEnumerable of String objects. The
compiler automatically gets to know
the type of result the query would re-
turn. And the variable is automatically
type-casted according to returned re-
sult, thus variable would be having all
the file names from the directory. Once
we have the file names, we would now
display file information on DataGrid-
View as a list. For this we will again use
FileSystem to get the file information.
With GetFileInfo of FileSystem we get
all the attributes related to a file, like
name, creation time, size etc. If we were
not to use LINQ here, it would have re-
quired getting a Collection of FileInfo
objects and then using loop we would
have retrieved values to store into an
array. With query-based coding, a de-
veloper can use LINQ to traverse and
retrieve objects. The following code
snippet will return an IEnumerable of
FileInfo objects and then we can popu-
late the DataGridView by passing the
filesInfo to list the result.
Dim filesInfo = From file In files Se-
lect My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFile-
Info(file)
Me.DataGridView1.DataSource =
filesInfo.ToList()
Now, on running the project we can
have the list of files along with the in-
formation listed in the DataGridView.
With this we show how LINQ over ob-
jects in memory is used and how cod-
ing has become easier for the
developers with the standard query op-
erators traversing and retrieving over
list of objects
LINQ to SQLWe have seen how standard query op-
erators can be used to access in-mem-
ory objects for a .NET project using
LINQ. Now LINQ to SQL is also a com-
ponent of Visual Studio 2008. It pro-
vides a platform for managing
relational data as objects coupled with
the ability to use query. In LINQ to
SQL, the data model of a relational
database is mapped to a developer-de-
fined object model. When this is exe-
cuted, LINQ to SQL translates the
language-integrated queries into SQL
for execution by the database, and then
returns the results to the defined ob-
jects. This provides an ability to work
on and manipulate the objects while
LINQ to SQL working in the back-
ground tracks the changes and reflects
them onto the database.
Let’s create a new VB project in Vi-
sual Studio 2008 to see how LINQ to SQL
works. For this create a new Windows
Form Application project and name it as
‘Linq2SqlDemo.’ For LINQ to SQL we
have objects mapped to database enti-
ties. These objects can be simple busi-
ness classes having attributes that
correspond to columns in the database.
But with Visual Studio 2008, we can use
O-R Designer to create these objects that
map to the database. To do this first we
need to add LINQ to SQL classes tem-
plate to the project, which is done by
right-clicking the project name on the
Solution Explorer window and selecting
the Add > New Item option. On the Add
New Item window name it as
PcqDemo.dbml. On clicking ‘OK’ the ob-
ject relation designer opens up. Through
the Server Explorer window, select an
SQL Server database. For this we have a
Select the ‘User’ object, mapped to the table User, in database to set it as the data-
source for the project ��
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demo database added to the Data Con-
nections. For displaying the list of users
from the table ‘Users,’ drag-drop the table
from the data connection onto the O-R
Designer. This creates ‘Users’ object corre-
sponding to the table ‘Users’ with each
property mapping to the corresponding
attribute in the database. This creates a
LINQ to SQL class that connects to the
database; from Properties we can see it
named as PcqDemoDataContext. Now we
can use this class on our application to
access and manipulate the data in the
database.
Coming back to the form design
view we now have to add a data-source
to the project. Here select an Object in-
stead of a Database, something contrary
to what we used to do earlier. On the ob-
ject-binding window select the ‘User’
object under the Project tree. This re-
sults in User object being created as data
source with all the attributes. Dropping
the User object on the form results in
creating Binding Navigator; now dock
the User Binding Navigator to parent
container. On the Form load event write
the code that will fetch the list from the
Users table and display it on the Binding
Navigator. For this get access to Data
Context, which in our case is PcqDemo-
DataContext, and we can declare that
globally as follows:
Private Db_con As New PcqDemo3Data-
Context
Now let’s write a query to list the users
from the database.We will use LINQ
query on user object that is mapped to the
database with the following code snippet:
Dim showUsers = From user In
Db_con.users Order By user.username Se-
lect user
Me.UserBindingSource.DataSource =
showUsers
We need not make database connec-
tions, but a reference to the DataContext
that will do the mapping of the objects to
the database. The query written in LINQ
at compile time gets translated to SQL
query so that the database can execute it
and return the result of the query in an
object-defined form. The LINQ feature is
easy to start up with, and the LINQ to SQL
feature enables the developer to do com-
mon database-related tasks with ease and
reduces their work on coding.
O-R Designer creates the User object and names the DataContext for Database as
PcqDemoDataContext, as shown in Properties window
Dragging DataSource User onto Form creates its BindingSource and its Navigator,
the result shows the User list ordered by attribute username �
On Execution
LINQ.qxp 10/20/2007 6:53 PM Page 78
Contest
99 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Creating interactive Web applications is a tedious task
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ate screenshots for guiding even a novice Web developer. This
book gives an idea starting from the basics such as installing
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and accessible sites. After reading this book one can learn how
to display and edit data, the number of ways to publish a fin-
ished site or building a shopping cart. It comes bundled with a
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book contest_nov'07.qxp 10/20/2007 5:51 PM Page 78
The Ultimate Boot CDCreate a Windows based Live CD using this free utility, which lets you add an ample number of recovery andrescue tools for safeguarding and maintaining your Windows based machines
Hands on
You must have heard of Linux
Live CDs. We use them for dif-
ferent purposes, such as rescue,
recovery, antivirus scanning etc, in
Linux environment. Let’s now try to
build a Live CD for Windows with similar
tools that may help you in recovering
your Windows machine from viruses/
hacker attacks, system failures or miss-
configurations. That is quite possible and
all you need is a piece of free software
called Ultimate Boot CD and a genuine
copy of Windows Installer CD.
This tool has more than 50 freeware
utilities (plug-ins), like antivirus, file re-
covery, networking tools, CD burning
software, MBR backup and many others.
You can download UBCD for free and then
install it by running its simple setup
process. Once that is done, you are ready
to write your own boot CD, that is nothing
short of being the ultimate.
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The entire updated AVG antivirus is downloaded for its inclu-
sion in our boot CD. Once the download is complete, you just
have to enable the service by clicking Enable.
Now, by using Build, you can build the ISO image of the boot CD.
This is how it reports, when you press the Build button. Once that
is done, you are ready to burn the CD.
Say, we want to put AVG Antivirus as a plug-in. For that, it will
give us two options. Either we can take our installed antivirus to
the CD or can directly take the latest version from the Internet.
Define the Source of Windows recovery files and name of
the Output folder. Plugins are used to enable or disable any
in-built utility.
2
4
1
3
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Desktop usersPrice: FreeUSP: Survive virus attacks,do easy repair and recoveryof files and utilitiesPrimary Link:http://www.ubcd4win.com/Google Keyword: Media con-vertor
�
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Masking with Corel Photo-Paint Masking is a vital task when compositing an image. Designers usually spend a lot of time selecting an objectand pasting it on another image.We tell you how to do this using Corel Photo-Paint
Hands on
Corel Photo-Paint is a high-qual-
ity image enhancer and image
manipulation program. It is a
companion application of CorelDraw
X3 graphics suite, designed specifically
for image editing. It includes new Image
Adjustment Lab that enables you to
evaluate different color tonal correction
settings for enhancing your photos.
In Photo-Paint there are four mask
modes available for selection. ‘Normal’
mode selects an area in an image, ‘Addi-
tive’ expands the editable regions by
selecting multiple areas, ‘Subtractive’
removes areas from a selection, and
‘XOR’ selects multiple areas.
Here we used Magic wand mask tool
as the background color is uniform.
When you click anywhere on the image
the tool takes the value of the first pixel
and expands the selected area to include
all surrounding pixels of similar value.
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For removing the unmasked area go to Edit >Cut and now
you can see the selected background. With this we get the
complete picture
For fine tuning, like removing the blur as highlighted, go to Ob-
ject >Defringe and set value of Defringe in the range of 1--5.
Your mask is now ready for use
Click on background and a red overlay appears on the object
and some parts of the background. For deselecting unneces-
sary overlay on the background just click on the areas
Open a new file and choose a desired background. Paste the
image you want to mask and select Magic Wand Tool. Set tol-
erance value as 5 and select anti-alias and Additive mode
2
4
1
3
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: DesignersPrice: $379USP: Corel Photo-Paint letsyou select objects in just a fewstepsPrimary Link: www. Corel.comGoogle Keyword: MaskingPhoto-Paint
�
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OptimizeYour Virtual MachinesUse Parallels Compression Server to improve the performance of your virtual machines by cleaning theirhard disks of unwanted clutter
Hands on
Virtual machines have become ubiquitous and are being
used for various purposes ranging from running mission
critical applications to testing. With time and usage, the
size of virtual machine starts increasing and then comes the prob-
lem of increasing the size of its hard disk. This problem can be
solved by using Parallels Compressor Server—a disk
management tool, which can reduce the size of virtual disks and
clean unnecessary files present on the virtual disk. It can be used
on virtual machines created in VMware Workstation, VMware
GSX server, Microsoft Virtual Server and PC, and ‘Parallels Work-
station ' environment.
This tool can either be installed on the host operating
system or inside the virtual machine. If you are running multiple
virtual servers on a single machine, it is recommended that you
install it on the host operating system. This is because then this
tool can be used by all virtual machines running on the host OS.
One can install it on Windows 2003, 2000, XP, 2003 x64, XP
x64, and major flavors of Linux. However, if you are
installing it on the guest OS then it only supports Windows.
How to use?Installing this management tool is simple. Once you’re through
with its installation then you will find a ParallelsCompressor.iso
image file on the location where you’ve installed the software.
Now, go to the settings of the virtual machine that you want to
compress, and in its CD/DVD option specify this image file. To do
this in VMware workstation, go to ‘Virtual Machine Settings’ op-
tion and select CD-ROM. Now choose the ‘ISO image’ option and
click on ‘Browse’ button to specify the location of the ISO image.
This image will be visible in virtual machine’s CD/DVD-ROM
drive. Double click to open the image, click on ‘Manual mode’ but-
ton and this will start the ‘Parallels Compressor Wizard.’ It will au-
tomatically detect the type of VM and OS running on your virtual
machine, and will then ask you to select the mode of compres-
sion. Select the ‘Advanced compression' option. Next, the wizard
will detect and list virtual hard disks present in the virtual ma-
chine i.e. the virtual hard disks created during the creation of
VM and not the real ones. Select the hard disk that you want
to compress, click on ‘Next’ and then choose the compression
level. Parallels Compressor supports three compression
levels: low, high, and medium, and in each level certain VM
optimization tasks are performed. You can simply select the com-
pression level by moving the slider. You can also select the tasks
which you want to be executed during compression. Select the
compression level and click on ‘Compress’. After the first step, the
virtual machine restarts and compression resumes. But before
the process is resumed, a pop up message will ask if you want to
continue. Click on ‘Yes to continue,’ and you’re done.
Swapnil Arora
Parallel compressor lets you decide which tasks should be execu-
ted at the time of compression & choose the level of compression
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: IT managers
Price: $179
USP: Compress virtual disks of VM
Primary Link: http://www.parallels.com
Google Keywords: Virtual machine compression
�
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Spam Busting in Windows Vista Is sorting spam mails from legitimate ones consuming your valuable time? Windows mail in Vista blocksspam and moves it to a junk folder, and even lets you create your own black and white lists. Here’s how
Hands on
Spam has become a major concern
and many a times, there’s more of
spam than legitimate mail com-
ing into a user’s mailbox. Sorting and
deleting all this spam from the inbox
takes a toll on productive time. To evade
spam, there are plenty of paid and free
anti-spam software available.
But if you are using Vista on your
desktop or laptop then you don’t have to
go for third party software. It offers you
a mail client that is designed to protect
users from bulk spam mail. Here we
will show you how to configure Win-
dows Mail in Vista to block incoming
spam. Vista Windows mail also comes
with an option that detects phishing
mails and protects users from getting
‘phished.’ You can even define your
own list of banned email IDs, in case
Vista is not able to detect spam coming
in from them.
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Sometimes, legitimate mails get blocked and sent to junk
folder.To avoid this right-click on the legitimate mail and se-
lect junk E-Mail>add Sender to Safe Senders’ list
To set a block list of your own from Junk mail option go to Block
Senders tab and add all the email IDs that you want to block on
your Windows mail
To block phishing attacks, configure Windows Mail by clicking
Tools> Junk e-mail options. Select ‘phishing’ and tick ‘Protect
My Inbox from messages with potential Phishing Links’
Open Windows Mail, configure your account, click on ‘Tools’
and junk email options. Select the level of protection: No Au-
tomatic Filtering, Low, High, and Safe List Only
2
4
1
3
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Vista users
USP: Configure Windows Mail
in Vista to combat spam and
phishing attacks
Primary link: http://support.
microsoft.com/ph/11732
Google Keyword: Spam preven-
tion in Vista
�
hands on-blocking unwanted spam with vista_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:46 PM Page 90
Add More Fire to Your FireFoxFirekeeper scans all incoming traffic to your Firefox browser and uses rules to detect browse- based attacks,hence, providing an additional layer of security
Hands on
Firekeeper is an add-on IDS/IPS for Mozilla Firefox browser,
which detects, warns and blocks malicious websites. It scans
all incoming traffic including URLs, headers, and body of a
webpage to detect browser-based attacks. For compressed,
encrypted or secure traffic (i.e. HTTPS), it scans after decompress-
ing or decrypting it. Firekeeper scans HTTP traffic and tries to look
for patterns of browser based attacks against a set of rules. The
rules for malwares and exploits are set by default, and you can also
easily create custom rules for detecting threats as well. They are
based on the well-known IDS, Snort. Whenever a threat is
detected, Firekeeper displays its full description like its URL, and
online references related to it as an alert. Further, it also asks the
user where to keep this URL, and what action to take on it.
Installing this add-on is simple. Just download the
firekeeper.xpi from the URL mentioned in the Direct Hit box, and
Firefox will automatically install it. After installation restart the
browser, and you can see the icon for Firekeeper on the extreme
right corner of the status bar. Now, as you surf the Web and a web-
site attacks your machine, this add-on will immediately display an
alert and prompt you to take action. You can take any of the four
actions: blacklist, white list, block once and allow once.
Firekeeper rules are made of two parts: Rule header and Rule
options. The header defines three actions that can be taken when-
ever a rule match is detected: pass, drop, and alert. Whenever a
‘pass’ action rule match occurs, it allows processing of HTTP traf-
fic without going for any further checks. Likewise, ‘drop’ action
blocks all traffic without any user intervention, and ‘alert’ gener-
ates an Alert window.
The Rule options describe what should trigger an action and
other information about the rule. There are three choices: url_con-
tent, headers_content, and body_content. Creating a rule is sim-
ple. open a text file and write
alert(msg: attack detected body_content:"clsid|3A"; nocase;)
In the body_content tag specify the content that you want to
scan in the incoming traffic, and in the msg tag define the message
that should be displayed when such content is detected. nocase tag
signifies that the content specified in the body_content tag will be
searched without any arguments.
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DIRECT HIT!
Applies To: Firefox users
Price: Free
USP: Harden Firefox against browser basedattacks
Primary Link: http://firekeeper.mozdev.org/
Google Keywords: Firekeeper, browser-basedIDS/IPS
Whenever the traffic matches a rule, a pop-up window is
displayed and user is asked to choose an action to take
After a threat is detected, you can view the Triggered rule and
response HTTP headers of the URL in hex or text modes �
Hands on - Firekeeper_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:30 PM Page 2
HTTP Fingerprinting SimplifiedWith latest version of httprint tool, you can collect as well as analyze signatures of Web servers, detect changesin Web servers, and also perform Web server inventory
Hands on
httprint is a Web server fingerprint-
ing tool that identifies the type of
the running HTTP server, and also
detects whether a Web server is obfuscated
using a third party software or not. It uses
the HTTP fingerprinting technique that is
quite popular amongst pen testers. One can
use it for Web server inventory and detect-
ing Web enabled devices.
This tool supports automatic SSL
detection and analysis. You can gather
various details about SSL certificates
such as who is the issuer, issue date,
certificate’s expiry date etc. Its signa-
tures database is in a text file, and these
signatures are used to analyze the sig-
natures that the scanned Web server
generates. You can also customize its
signature database. It lets you import
Web server’s details from an nmap scan
and can be installed on all versions of
Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
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After selecting the detected Web server, you can see the http
signature returned from the server and also the OS on which
the Web server is running
httprint also generates a detailed report of the scan performed.
In the screenshot above, you can see a detailed SSL analysis
done by httprint tool
Once the scanning is done, you can view the banner reported
by the Web server and banner deduced by the http print. A
difference between the two implies obfuscation
2
4
1
3
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Pen testers, IT
managers
Price: Free
USP: Identification of Web
servers
Primary Link: http://www.net-
square.com/httprint/index.shtml
Google Keyword: Web server
fingerprinting
�
Below ‘Host’ option provide the name & port no of the Web
server.To add more hosts, right click and choose ‘Add new’
option. Click on Start to begin the scanning process
hands on httprint.qxp 10/22/2007 9:39 PM Page 90
Linux Online Aware TaskbarA one-click solution for all your online and desktop applications, replacing the current side panel fromGNOME desktops
Hands on
With Linux for desktops gaining momentum
amongst the masses, the need of going online is
increasing. BigBoard, a built-in feature in the up-
coming Fedora 8, is meant for online and desktop apps and
further gets integrated with Google and Mugshot. It is an on-
line panel which at present can only be incorporated with
Linux GNOME desktops. It is considered as a replacement of
the current working panels as it provides access to the in-
stalled application in categorized form, shows online friends
and photos, and the daily schedule. Here we show how to in-
stall and configure it for your needs.
Installation Copy the following installation files from ‘PCQ Professional
CD’ onto your PC:
1. bigboard-0.5.5-1.fc7.i386.rpm
2. hippo-canvas-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm
3. hippo-canvas-python-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm
4. mugshot-1.1.55-1.fc7.i386.rpm
Before installing BigBoard on Fedora 7 you need to install
some dependencies for BigBoard. But if you already have these
dependencies installed, the first three commands need not be
run. Execute the following commands to install:
#rpm -ivh hippo-canvas-python-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm
#rpm -ivh hippo-canvas-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm
#rpm -ivh mugshot-1.1.55-1.fc7.i386.rpm
#rpm -ivh bigboard-0.5.5-1.fc7.i386.rpm
Starting UpAfter installation, open ‘Run Application’ window by pressing
‘Alt+F2’ and start BigBoard by initiating the command ‘big-
board.’ A slidebar appears. There are two login options: first is
to login using GNOME online account. Using this you can pro-
vide your public information such as name, choose picture,
and upload photo. This is also required for integrating e-mail
account and IM with Bigboard’s panel. The only catch is that
only the users using these apps through BigBoard can see and
interact with each other. So a user using GTalk through Big-
Board can only see other users who are also using GTalk
through BigBoard. The second login is using Gmail account,
which is required if you have integrated Gmail to the online
panel ‘BigBoard.’ After login, it shows the online apps and the
files shared online. It also lists apps and documents you often
use and provides a search option which helps you find multi-
ple elements within your desktop and Internet.
Rakesh Sharma
Bigboard’s panel depicting the recently used apps and the
schedule getting updated with the online integrated apps
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Gnome users
Price: Free
USP: Online desktop sidebar for Fedora 8
Primary Link: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureOnlineDesktop
Google Keywords: BigBoard Linux
�
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Add Liveliness to Your Web Pages Lively animated images add on to the visual appeal of Web content.You can use Photoshop for creating suchimages in a few easy steps
Hands on
If you think Photoshop is only meant
for retouching photographs, color
correction or image manipulation,
then think again. One can even create
small animations for the Web by using
Photoshop CS3 to make Web pages look
more colorful and accessible. Using CS3,
one can create frame based animations
by modifying image layers to show
movement. Normally, Web designers use
specialized software programs for creat-
ing an animated page and spend a lot of
time to figure out how their graphic
would look on website. Using CS3, de-
signers can also preview how their file
will look on Web, how large its size is and
how much time will it take to download.
This will help them take quick decisions
as to how they want their artwork to ap-
pear on the Web. Here, in this article
we’ll show you how to create an anima-
tion for a submarine going under sea.
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Now, select the path that you defined in the previous step,
and click on ‘Make selection’ option. In the window that pops
up, define Feather radius as 0.5 pixels, and cut submarine
Save this image in a separate file, and the area from where the
image is cut will be either white or transparent. Fill that area
with sky and ocean
Use the ‘Pen’ tool to make a path for the submarine image.To
save this path, select the ‘Path’ option from the Windows menu,
double click on the ‘Work Path’ option and define it
Open image of a submarine in Photoshop, press Ctrl+A to
select the image, and paste it onto a new layer. Keep the
background layer visibility off
2
4
1
3
DIRECT HIT!Applies To: Web designers
USP: No more toggling b/w
different animation programs.
You can upload your animations
directly on Web
Primary Link: www.adobe.com
Google Keyword: Pulsating
animation
��
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Hands on
Select layer one, chose path 1 from the Path window, make a
selection and paste submarine inside the selection using the
‘Paste into’ option present under the Edit menu
You can use the ‘Brush’ or ‘Healing Brush’ tool to fill that area
with sky and ocean. Select and copy the new background,
and paste it onto multiple layers
Go to layer 2, use ‘Paste into’ option and move the submarine
image a bit using the arrow key, and merge the new layer with
layer 2. Repeat this step for all layers
Under the Windows menu, select the ‘Animation’ option and
add new frames. Select layer 1 as first frame, layer 2 as
second frame and so on
Define interval time as 0.1 second and save your animation in Photoshop CS3 by using the ‘Save for Web and devices’ option
present under the File menu. It’ll optimize the animation file and save it as a GIF file.To see animation created, click on the ‘Play’
button present under the ‘Animation’ window
6
7 8
9 10
�
5
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Using Explorer as ShellEnhance the functionality of your Windows Explorer by adding custom commands through a small and simple tool called ‘StExBar’
Hands on
Imagine how simple your work would become if MS DOS
prompt is incorporated into Windows Explorer. Also, how
fast and easy things would turn if Windows Explorer is
customized according to one’s need. StExBar is a tool that ful-
fills all the requirements by incorporating MS-DOS features
into Windows Explorer.
Here we show how StExBar can be installed to put addi-
tional functionality to Windows Explorer by adding custom
commands. Installing this tool is pretty simple:
just download the ‘dll’ file that is approximately 157 KB from
the link provided in the specs box. It is free and hence
you need not have any serial code or license to get it
working. Go to start>run and type the following
command ‘regsvr32.exe c:\StExBar.dll’ and click on OK
button. The ‘regsvr32.exe’ is a process within Windows
that is used to register the ‘dll’ and ActiveX control to the
registry.
After the installation, open Windows Explorer, right click
on the toolbar and select ‘StExBar.’ This tool requires Windows
XP or a higher to get work. It is also provided with an option of
adding custom commands to ease your work.
Adding custom commandsClick on ‘Option’ button available on the ‘StExBar’ bar. A Win-
dow pops up, now click on the ‘Edit Config File’ button that
opens up a configuration file in notepad. If you want to add a
link to notepad, simply add these lines at the end of the config-
uration file:
name = Editor
tooltip = open the selected file in the notepad
commandline = %WINDIR%/system32/notepad.exe %sel-
paths
The lines above should be written in exactly the same man-
ner, as this is the required format for adding custom command
to ‘StExBar.’ Here, the first includes ‘name’ that you want to be
displayed on the bar, second is the ‘tip’, and third is the ‘com-
mand’ i.e. path to your custom program, including the param-
eter you want to pass. After you are done, save the
configuration file, and finally click on the ‘OK’ button. For test-
ing, select any text file and click on the ‘Editor’ button which
we have just created on the ‘StExBar’ bar. The file opens up in
notepad.
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DIRECT HIT!
Applies To: End users
Price: Free
USP: Ease up your daily work
Primary Link: tools.tortoisesvn.net/StExBar
Google Keywords: StExBar
�
With the rename option in StExBar, you can select as many
no. of files and change extensions as you want in one go
StExBar.qxp 10/22/2007 9:47 PM Page 2
D I Y
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We first talked about
Microsoft’s Compute Cluster
Suite in April last year. Lots of
things have changed since then in the
world of HPC, and likewise, the Cluster
Suite has also undergone many changes.
At that time, we had just three 64-bit ma-
chines in our labs and we used all of them
to create the MS Compute Cluster. The in-
terface was so difficult that we were not
even able to create a test MPI (Message
passing interface) job and submit to the
cluster properly. But of course that was
the first public beta of MS CCS and it was
a bit too much to expect full blown func-
tionality from it.
Today we have the new Compute
Cluster Suite SP1, and also have twenty
64-bit machines at our disposal. That’s
why this time, we decided to build a much
bigger cluster of 15 nodes, with each
node having a dual core CPU (plus one
head node) using the MSCCS SP1 and
then test it with some standard industry
benchmarks.
We’ll first talk about how to build such
a cluster, and then we’ll discuss how to port
High Performance Linpack(HPL) to Win-
dows and then finally run it on all the
nodes in a distributed manner to see what
kind of performance it’s able to deliver.
Linpack is a benchmark that meas-
ures floating point operations (FLOPS)
and comes in different variants. One such
variant of Linpack is HPL or High Perfor-
mance Linpack. It is an industry standard
benchmark for measuring performance
of supercomputers and has been used by
top500.org for benchmarking world’s
best 500 supercomputers.
The Setup MS CCS doesn’t work on 32-bit architec-
ture, but you can install either the Head
or the Client node on a 32-bit machine.
The 15 nodes that we used for setting up
MSCCS had an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz
processor and 512 MB RAM. For the head
node, we took a Dual Xeon processor ma-
chine with one GB RAM. The 15 nodes
were meant to process the computing
jobs, whereas the Head node managed
jobs and the whole cluster.
To interconnect the cluster we’ve
used a Gigabit Ethernet network. All
nodes of course, had Gigabit Ethernet
cards, and were PXE boot enabled. These
PXE enabled cards are used for installing
an OS remotely and come in handy while
using the Windows Remote Deployment
server to do a bulk installation of OSes on
multiple machines. All nodes were head
less and connected to an IP KVM for
centralized management.
Installing the Head NodeThe first thing you need of course is a
copy of MS Windows Server 2003
Compute Cluster Edition, and you can
download a 180 days trial version of the
same from http://tinyurl.com/3ysqz5.
For this download to be successful you
will require a Microsoft .Net Passport.
Install it on the machine you want to
use as the Head node. The same OS can
be used for creating the Head node as well
as the Compute nodes. After
Anindya Roy
��
Running Linpack on Win Compute ClusterAre clusters and number crunching machines a part of your fantasy world? With this series, we’ll takeyou through a journey of how to build and benchmark your own MS Compute cluster using Linpack
While installing Microsoft Compute Cluster Pack, you will see this screen. Select the
first option to use a node as the Head node
SERIES
PART I
CB
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installing the Head node, create an
isolated domain for the cluster.
If you still have another domain
controller on this network, then you can
create the head node as an additional do-
main controller. We created an isolated
domain controller for our setup. For this
we ran the dcpromo command and fol-
lowed the dcpromo wizard. Just make
sure that while creating the domain you
also install and create a local DNS server
on the Head node. This will help you
when you deploy MS CCS.
Now, install the DHCP server on this
machine so that the remote deployment
server can work properly. (Configuration
of DHCP server is out of the scope of this
article and we are assuming that you
have the basic knowhow of how to con-
figure basic services like DHCP on a Win-
dows Server 2003). One word of caution-
if you are planning to provide an Internet
connection to your cluster (which is a
good idea as you will get regular updates
and downloads easily), then configure it
using Windows Internet Connection
Sharing and not with Remote Access
Server (RAS). I am not sure about the
reason but MSCCS recommends ICS in-
stead of RAS, and we also had troubles
while we tried to run it with RAS.
As you are done with the configura-
tion of all necessary services i.e. ADS,
DNS, DHCP and ICS, download the latest
x64 version of Compute Cluster Pack SP1
from http://tinyurl.com/2rjwt4.
When installation starts the wizard
pops up, which is pretty much self
explanatory. All you have to do is to select
the ‘Create a new compute cluster’
option. Follow this wizard to install all the
required components to make the ma-
chine a Head Node.
Go to Program Files and you will find
a new menu where you will see two appli-
cations: Cluster Job manager (used for
submitting and managing cluster jobs)
and Cluster Administration (used to
configure cluster and cluster nodes).
Configuring the ClusterThis process involves three major tasks:
1. Configuring the network topology
2. Installing and adding nodes
3. User management
Since, ours is a test cluster we won’t
give much emphasis to the users manage-
ment part, rather we will focus on config-
uring the network and nodes now.
Configure the NetworkTo configure the cluster, go to Program
files>Microsoft Compute Cluster Pack>
and start the Compute Cluster Adminis-
trator. Under the ’To do List‘ pane, select
the ‘Configure Compute Cluster Topol-
ogy’ option.
This will open up the wizard. From
the drop down menu select ’Compute
Nodes Isolated on Private Network‘ and
proceed to the next step.
Further the wizard will ask you to se-
lect the network cards which are con-
nected to the public and private network
one by one. Select the right option and
then click on Finish. After this, disable the
firewall, which is recommended consid-
ering the fact that ours is a test setup.
For this, click on the ‘Manage Win-
dows Firewall Settings’ option, which will
open up the standard Firewall manager
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This is the ‘admin’ window of Compute Cluster Pack. All the installation and manage-
ment tasks happen from this single interface
Wanna be part of this series ?What we plan is to do a comparative shootout of commodity clustering architecture inthe series, where we will benchmark all the clustering solutions one after the other eachmonth on similar set of physical hardware. At the end of the series we will compile afull-fledged summary: which is the best clustering solution and will cover all the as-pects such as usability, support, performance, cost, etc. But that’s a long way to goand right now we can’t be sure where will this story head, because of the requirementof huge amount of resources , time and skilled manpower. So, we are looking out forcontributors who can help us in this story. For more discussion on the topic we’ve al-ready started a post on our forums. You can also join in and discuss at http://forums.pc-quest.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6148.
��
diy_ms compute cluster deployment_final.qxp 10/24/2007 3:33 PM Page 111
window and disable the firewall. Remem-
ber, if you are building it on a production
network then chose your security policy
options accordingly.
Installing Nodes Click on the ‘Install RIS’ link and install
Remote Deployment Server. Then click on
the ‘Manage Image’ option. This will open
up a wizard. In the next step, select ‘Add a
new Image’ option and click on Finish.
This will start the standard RIS wizard and
will then ask for the folder where it will
create the RIS root directory.
Make sure that for this folder you select
a partition other than the system parti-
tion; else you won’t be able to install Win-
dows 2003. Provide a name to the folder
such as RemoteInstall and then proceed.
Further the wizard will ask you about the
location of the CD, whose Image you have
to create for remote installation. Place the
Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster
edition CD in the CD drive of the Head node
and specify the drive letter in this wizard.
Click on ‘Next’ and proceed till the
wizard gets completed and the image
building process starts. This process
will take around 10 to 15 minutes for
completion.
Once it is done, your RIS is ready and
now you can turn on and boot all your
Compute nodes over the network to start
an un-attended remote installation. This
process is quite simple, so we won’t discuss
its details.
Adding NodesTill now, only the OS has been installed on
the Compute nodes. To make the whole
setup work properly, you have to install a
few more components. For this, go to each
node one by one, uncheck ‘create the
machine a Head node’ option and run the
Compute Cluster Pack on them. This will
install all the required components,
though in some cases it might also require
to download some upgrades etc from
Internet during installation. So make sure
that you have the connection handy
if required.
Once this is done, you can now add
nodes to the Head node. For this first join
all nodes to the Cluster domain and reboot
them. Now go to the Head node and open
Compute Cluster Administrator. From the
‘To do list’ select the Add Node option,
which will open up a wizard. It will ask the
kind of employment that you want,
select ‘Manual Deployment’ and then click
on ‘Next’. In the next step, type in the
FQDN of all the nodes one by one and add
them by using the Add button. Then close
the wizard by clicking on Finish. The
FQDN will be something like Node00x,
where x is the number of the node.
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This is the place where you configure network topology of your cluster.The next
likely option will be ‘Compute node loaded’
In the ‘Compute Cluster Administrator’ window, you can check the status of the nodes.
To check the exact resource utilization of any node, use the System Monitor option ��
s
diy_ms compute cluster deployment_final.qxp 10/24/2007 3:34 PM Page 46
Porting Linpack for WindowsCompute ClusterHere, we will see how one can port (re-
compile) Linpack source in Windows and
then run it on Windows Compute Cluster
Environment. We tried it and used it for
benchmarking our created Microsoft
Compute Cluster. But we faced a problem.
Basically, Linpack is an application used
majorly for testing Linux based clusters
and trust me, porting it to run on MSCCS
was not at all a child’s play.
In this article, we will see how with the
help of some tools and libraries, you can
recompile the HPL source files in your
Windows architecture and run it on the
top of MSCCS.
PrerequisitesThe list of prerequisite SDKs and libraries
is too long, but the first thing that you need
is MS Visual Studio 2005. Install it on any
of the nodes of your MS Compute Cluster.
The compiler is to be installed on one of the
nodes because it ensures that you are com-
piling your application on the right hard-
ware architecture and as a result you’ll get
better performance.
After this, download both the AMD
and Intel’s Math Kernel libraries. Down-
load and install the file called ‘acml3.5.0-
64-win64’ from http://tinyurl.com/
2k6tny. Also download and install the In-
tel’s Math Kernel library use the following
link: http://tinyurl.com/2p9m8f.
Now install the MS Compute Cluster
SDK from http://tinyurl.com/3yjyg9. Just
make sure that you download and install
the 64-bit version. Now the installation is
done but for Linpack to work properly
you’ll have to perform some nasty tricks.
This is because the makefile that we are
going to use for compiling Linpack had a
lots of path names hardcoded.
To begin with, first create a folder
called “scratch” at C:\ of the node where
you have installed all the above mentioned
components. Then go to the folders where
you have installed ACML and MKL.
By default they will be in the Program
Files folder if you did not give any other
path. Go to the AMD folder first and
rename the ACML3.5.X file as
ACML3.0.0. Similarly, go to the Intel’s
folder and rename 9.1.x as 8.0.1. So, the
hacking part is done and we are ready to
work on the actual file.
Compiling LinpackNow download the latest version of HPL
from http://tinyurl.com/2mopw8. Unzip
it in a way that the HPL folder comes
under the C:\scratch folder.
In Linux, Linpack uses the make com-
mand for compilation. But the makefiles
are generally created for different Linux
distros and not for the Windows. So, now
you have to grab a makefile for Windows.
To make our task easier, if we also get a
.vcproj file for Linpack then we can use it
to compile Linpack directly on VS 2005.
You can download all the required compo-
nents from our forum. The link for the
same is http://forums.pcquest.com/fo-
rum/viewtopic.php?t=6154&highlight=.
Go to this link and download the
xphl_port.zip file. Unzip it under the
C:\scratch\hpl folder and copy the
HPL_timer_walltime.c to the
C:\scratch\hpl\testing\timer folder. There
will be a file with the same name already
sitting in that folder, so while copying
replace the old one with the new one.
Double click on the xhpl.vcproj file and
open it as a VC++ project in VS 2005. You
have to build the project but before that
one more thing is required. The VS 2005
while compiling an exe embeds the mani-
fest file inside the exe, which is not recog-
nized by our mpiexec command that
finally you have to use for running Lin-
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��
In MSCCS you can execute a task directly through the command prompt by running the
mpiexec command. To submit a task you’ve to go through the Task Properties window
diy_ms compute cluster deployment_final.qxp 10/24/2007 3:36 PM Page 47
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pack. So, you have to tell VS2005 not to
embed the manifest file while compiling.
To do so, go to the Property page of the
xhpl project and click on Manifest Tool>
input output and change the value of
‘Embed Manifest’ from Yes to No. Now
close this window and go to the Build
menu, and click on the Build Project op-
tion to compile Linpack. The exe will be
created in the C:\scratch\hpl\bin\
64\xhpl.exe.
Running XHPLTo run XHPL you have to use the Compute
Cluster Job Manager. For this go to
Program Files> Microsoft Compute Clus-
ter Pack. Then, go to the File> Submit job
Menu. This will open up a window. Here
provide a descriptive job name and go to
the Processors tab. Then select the number
of processors that you want to use from
your cluster to process your job. Remem-
ber, the number you provide should be
equal to the number of cores and not the
number of physical processors.
Now go to the Tasks tab and in the
Command line field, type in the command
you want to run. If it’s an MPI process that
you are going to run (which Linpack is)
then the command will be something like
’mpiexec xhpl.exe’. To add tasks click on
the Add button. Tasks that have been
added will get listed under the task list.
Select the task and click on the Edit button.
Here, provide the working directory, and
input and output file name. The working
directory is essentially the shared location
where the xhpl.exe sits and it should look
something like Error! Hyperlink reference
not valid.
The output file can be any file where
you want to get the output of Linpack. By
default it is hpl.out. The input file is of
course the HPL.dat file. Provide these
values and submit the task to get executed.
This will start the xhpl process on all
the nodes. But if it fails then you have to
modify the hpl.dat file in the bin folder.
This is the file where you set all runtime
settings for xhpl and from here you can
also tune XHPL for performance. Tuning
XHPL is a tedious job and it is not possible
for me to cover it in these two pages.
While writing this article, I am still try-
ing to figure out how to get the best
performance out of our cluster by tuning
XHPL. So far, I have achieved some
46 GFlops, but there is still a long way to
go. So, when I am done with this tuning,
next month I will talk about how to tune
XHPL in detail. Till then you can refer to
the article hosted at
http://tinyurl.com/23q98y.
Applications built using Visual Studio with Manifest option enabled, can’t be run using
MS CCS.Therefore, disable that option before you compile Linpack
Once you have submitted the job, you can then view the status of the job under the Job
Monitor window �
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Notebooks are a boon for travellers. They give you the mo-
bility and freedom to carry all your data, applications, etc
wherever you travel. Have you ever wished that you could
carry the same data and applications without really lugging a lap-
top around with you? Maybe instead of a laptop, carry a small de-
vice that fits in your shirt’s pocket? Well, that’s exactly what
RingCube Technologies has introduced. It’s a desktop virtualiza-
tion software called MojoPac. It can be installed on any USB stor-
age device and used to capture personal settings, configurations,
applications and data files from your personal computer. By con-
necting a MojoPac installed device to any Win XP based PC, you
can have your own personal desktop created on that host PC.
MojoPac currently supports Windows XP based computers. It
is a small installable file of about 8 MB that can be installed on any
USB 2.0 compliant device, be it an iPod, mobile phone, pen drive
or portable HDD. Once MojoPac has been installed, you can log on
to the MojoPac desktop that runs from the portable device. It con-
verts your portable device into your ‘C’ drive where applications
can be loaded and data files copied. It also provides the facility to
transfer your Mozilla and IE settings such as bookmarks, Home
page, etc through a Data Copy. This allows you to have your own
personal bookmarks and browsing settings when using MojoPac
on a host PC. The ‘Data Copy’ option can also be used to transfer
files and folders from the host PC to the portable device. So, effec-
tively, the device having MojoPac is the real PC having all applica-
tions and settings while the computer to which it is attached is just
a utility to run MojoPac. You can install applications on the
portable device and access them from any PC, anywhere. Most of
the regular applications can be installed, be they for business, de-
velopers, editing tools or games. MojoPac allows full access to the
host PC’s resources like printers, network, CD/DVD drive and at-
tached peripherals. It provides complete isolation from the host PC,
so that application data and settings are not stored on the host PC,
including browser history. We installed MojoPac Deluxe on a 110
GB portable USB HDD, and installed applications like MS Office,
Eclipse, Java SDK, etc on it, along with importing IE settings. When
plugging this device on an XP machine, without MS Office or Java
installed, we were able to work on Eclipse and create MS Office doc-
uments. We were also able to have our IE bookmarks available.
However, what it lacks is security. In case, you lose the portable de-
vice, you lose all the settings along with it. MojoPac is available in
two versions---Deluxe is paid, while Freedom is available for free
but limited by the lack of technical support and doesn’t have the
option to configure auto-updates which run each time the device
is plugged into any host.
BOTTOMLINE: An ideal tool for professionals to carry theirpersonal settings and applications around, and that too ina device that fits into their pocket. �
MojoPac Desktop Virtualization SoftwareInstall MojoPac on your iPod, mobile phone or portable USB HDD to carry personal applications, settings anddata and transform any Windows XP based computer into your personal computer
Rahul Sah
Reviews
Price: $49.99 (1 license)
Meant For: Mobile executives
Key Specs: Supports Win XP based PCs, USB2.0 storage devices
Pros: Complete access to host resources; isolatesworking environment from host PC
Cons: No security features
Contact: RingCube TechnologiesTel: 9945031390 Email: [email protected]
SMS Buy 131181 to 56767
Shown here is the Mojopac desktop on the host PC.You can
freely use all your personal settings and applications
Review - MojoPac_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:14 PM Page 116
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GENOME 2.20 is out and has already been incorporated in
two most popular Linux distros---Mandriva 2008 and
OpenSuSE 10.3. However, it’s not yet out as standard RPM
or deb files for installation or upgrade on older distros. So, if you
don’t want to install Mandriva or OpenSuSE, you can still check
out the new GNOME. Simply download Foresight Linux from
http://torrent.GNOME.org/, which is essentially a Live CD devel-
oped by GNOME developers. Here’s a sneak preview of the popu-
lar desktop GUI.
Intuitive new featuresIf you are among those who often send mails and forget to attach
actual files, then GNOME has something really interesting for
you. The default mail client of GNOME 2.20, ie Evolution, has
this nifty feature that is always on the lookout for words such as
attachment, attach, etc whenever you type a mail. In case it finds
a match, it warns you about the possibility of a mail attachment
and requests you to confirm the same before you send the mail.
Of course, there is no great technology behind this but it’s really
useful to have. Plus, you will also see a task bar icon of evolution
in GNOME 2.20.
GNOME is clever enough to understand the EXIF information
from new age cameras. EXIF or Exchangeable Image File is an im-
age file format that incorporates specific metadata into JPEG or Tiff
files, which when copied to a computer, tell you the orientation of
an image. So, your GNOME File Manager will automatically dis-
cover portrait and landscape images while being transferred from
the EXIF enabled camera to the PC and do the needful changes to
their orientation.
GENOME has another interesting feature that doesn’t involve
any rocket science, but is thoughtful nonetheless. GNOME’s
‘Locked Screen’ dialog has a button called ‘Leave a note’ where vis-
itors can drop in a note in your absence. You don’t need sticky notes
anymore thanks to this feature.
User profilesA new tool called Sabayon has been incorporated with GNOME,
which is a User Profile Editor where admins can configure user pro-
files sitting on a live GNOME session. When a profile is created or
edited, a nested GNOME session starts up. An administrator can
use this to change GConf keys inside the GNOME session. Inside the
nested window, the admin can create personalized profiles depend-
ing on the type of work a user is supposed to perform. The best part
is that these profiles can be saved in a central location and deployed
across multiple machines.
BOTTOMLINE: The new GUI has a host of interesting fea-tures, some of which are so simple, and yet one wonderswhy didn’t anybody think of them before. �
GNOME 2.20Support for EXIF digital cameras, a new user profiles editor, and a few thoughtful features in the Evolutionmail client are a few of the highlights in the latest desktop environment for linux. Here’s a sneak peak.
Anindya Roy
Preview
Price: N/A
Meant For: Linux Users
Key Specs: New Evolution client; EXIF informationsupport for digital cameras; New User ProfileEditor
Pros: Has incorporated some very thoughtful newfeatures
Cons: None
Contact: http://torrent.GNOME.org/
SMS Buy 131183 to 56767
If you type attach while composing a mail in Evolution,
without actually attaching a file, it pops up a warning
review - gnome 2.20_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:32 AM Page 120
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NetOp Remote Control (RC) is a software to help organ-
izations remotely manage hosts on their network.
The key highlight of this software is that it let’s you
control machines on different platforms, which include Win-
dows, Linux, Mac, and Solaris. The software has two compo-
nents, a Host and Guest. An administrator would use the Guest
component to connect to a Host computer to remotely access
and control it.
By using RC, a Guest can have full control of the remote
machine, including the authority to even Shutdown, Lock, or
restart it. In addition to remote control, RC also provides file-
transfer between Guest and Host, text, audio, and video chat, and
login authentication for testing a Guest.
The Host provides full functionality for Windows plat-
forms, and for Linux, Solaris and Mac, it provides remote con-
trol, chat and file transfer facility only. Similarly, the Guest
module for Windows provides all functionalities, but only re-
mote connection facility is available for the Guest module on
Linux, Solaris or Mac platforms.
The installation and setup of Host and the Guest components
is easy. Once the Host has been installed, it can be configured to
cater to any Guest. Plus, policy settingss can be made about each
user’s access privilege. There’s an IP filtering option that acts as
security against unauthorized Host access. From the Guest com-
ponent, by entering the name or IP address and selecting the
communication profile, one can easily access the Host. The com-
munication profile is the protocol that the Host will be allowing
that Guest for access.
RC provides additional functionality to Windows OS remote
desktops, such as cross-platform support, file-transfer between
host and client with split-screen and drag-drop feature, hard-
ware and software inventory of the host system. It also provides
end-to-end encryption of data packets with 256-bit AES and
Guest authentication for remote control. The feature of Send/Re-
trieve clipboard enables the contents of clipboard to be shared be-
tween the host and client computers.
The software worked well over a LAN. However, when we
tried to use it on a 256 kbps WAN connection, it didn’t work.
Windows Remote Desktop however worked fine on the same
WAN link. So it would be nice if the software allows connectiv-
ity over slow WAN links as well.
BOTTOMLINE: A good buy for enterprises that want tocentralize their maintenance and support tasks. �
NetOp Remote Control 9.0If you have a heterogenous network and are looking for a solution to remotely manage all the hosts on it, thencheck out this solution. It lets you gain complete control over remote hosts over an encrypted link
Rahul Sah
Reviews
Price: $183 (per Host) and $183 (per Guest) Meant For: IT managersKey Specs: File transfer between a host and aguest, guest ID authentication, transfer keyboardand mouse controls to hostPros: Multiple platform support, data packetencryption Cons: No file transfer between Linux guest andWindows hostContact: M3 Idea Solutions–NetOp India,Coimbatore, Tel: 2440402, E-mail: [email protected] Buy 131184 to 56767
By selecting the host from network-list and appropriate com-
munications profile, we can connect with the host machine
reviews_netop remote control fulpage_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:25 AM Page 122
Reviews
�
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Reviews
�
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This switch has the ability to handle voice traffic for tele-
com service providers and data centers. It has 24 10/100
ports, and two shared Gigabit Ethernet ports. The X250e
series switches are stackable and so there are two stacking inter-
faces provided at the back.
The switch provides high availability and performance with
its advanced traffic management features like modular operat-
ing system and redundant power supply. ExtremeXOS, the mod-
ular operating system that it comes bundled with, monitors each
independent OS process and in case any of them halts, it auto-
matically restarts the process resulting in continuous network
uptime. It also has support for EAPS (Ethernet Automatic Pro-
tection Switching) that allows the network to recover from
failovers within a fraction of a second. This ensures that VoIP
calls or digital video feeds transmitted do not drop or freeze due
to link fail-over on the network.
The Summit 250e-24P supports Power over Ethernet and
can be used by devices that require power from LAN connections,
such as IP telephones. The switch also supports the
standard Layer 2 and Layer 3 fea-
tures such as
Spanning
Tree Protocol, Link Aggrega-
tion, DHCP and Quality of Service (QoS).
Other two features, MAC filtering and port mirroring, make
it a more secure device to connect your wares with. Especially
MAC filtering, which allows a port to be dedicated to a given MAC
address and locked for any new network device, thus preventing
network attacks from frequently changing MAC addresses.
The switch doesn’t get shipped with a default IP. That has to
be configured through its Command Line Interface (CLI). Once
the IP has been configured, the switch can be managed through
CLI or a Web interface, called ExtremeXOS Screenplay. The lat-
ter interface is quite detailed and provides functionalities to con-
figure VLANs, set policies for ports and monitor them, and view
statistics related to network traffic.
We tested the switch using NetIQ Qcheck in an isolated net-
work. It gave a throughput of 94.118 Mbps for transferring
1000 Kbytes of payload from one end to the other.
And when we flooded the switch with excessive
traffic over some ports and checked its
throughput on other ports, it still
managed a decent 94 Mbps. This
means the switch is intelligent
enough to isolate ports having excessive
traffic, so that throughput over other ports is not
hampered.
Along with Summit X250e-24P we also received another
switch from the X250e series, the Summit X250e-48T. This
switch has mostly similar features but twice the number of
10/100 ports, however, it does not support Power over Ethernet.
The price is also same as that of X250e-24P and the performance
is equally good.
BOTTOMLINE: Its performance and features make it idealfor networks where VoIP or high density data streamingare used. �
Extreme Networks Summit X250e-24PThis Fast Ethernet switch is used to manage high density traffic coming from multiple devices such as IP tele-phones, wireless APs and others that require Power over Ethernet
Rahul Sah
Reviews
Price: Rs 76,000 (1 yr warranty)Meant For:Telecom providers, Data CentersKey Specs: Modular OS, port mirroring, PoE,EAPS, VLAN, MAC address filtering Pros: Good performance, detailed Web basedmanagement interface Cons: NoneContact: Avaya GlobalConnect, GurgaonTel: 9818672278 Email: [email protected]
SMS Buy 131186 to 56767
reviews_Avaya Switches_final.qxp 10/22/2007 1:14 PM Page 106
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This time we received a managed and unmanaged HP
ProCurve switch. These are both meant to be used at
the edge of the LAN in an organization.
HP 1700 24GThis is a 22-ports managed Fast Ethernet switch with 2 dual-
personality ports. It supports IEEE 802.3ab Link Aggregation
Control protocol and 802.3x Flow Control protocol to enable
transmission and reception of data in an orderly manner. It
also comes with some QoS features, such as IEEE 802.1p port
prioritization that delivers data to devices by honoring preset
priorities. Its MAC address table supports up to 8000 entries,
which help the switch in supporting a large network. Broad-
cast Control is another QoS feature that cuts down unwanted
broadcast traffic on the network. The switch also features a
fan-less design for silent operation.
It is easy to configure through a Web-
based interface. The VLAN
configuration with this
browser-based interface
was easy and also the fea-
ture of supporting Jumbo
frames can be enabled
through this interface.
Jumbo packet support means
frame size can be up to 9216 bytes to
improve performance for large data transfers. The interface
not only gives configuration and monitoring functionalities
but also has the option for setting security and doing diagnos-
tic tests. Coming to performance, we stressed the switch with
NetIQ Qcheck. It gave a throughput of 94.118 Mbps on an iso-
lated network for transferring 1000 Kbytes of payload from
one end to another and in a response time of 1 ms, which is
pretty similar to the performance of Netgear ProSafe FS728TS
switch (reviewed August ‘06). Further,
when we flooded the switch
with excessive traffic, the
switch still managed an aver-
age throughput of 56 Mbps.
HP 1400 24GThis is a 22-ports unmanaged
Gigabit Ethernet switch, which also has 2
dual personality ports. It supports auto-sensing of link speed
and auto-negotiation of half or full-duplex modes on each
port, so that the network devices work the moment they’re
connected to it. Just like its cousin, it also supports 8000 en-
tries in its MAC address table, supports Jumbo frames, and has
a fan-less design. This switch gave an average throughput of
615.4 Mbps for transferring 1000 Kbytes of payload from one
end to another and in a response time of 1 ms. These results
are lower as compared to D-Link’s DGS-1024D switch that
gave 728 Mbps (reviewed July ‘06). Its throughput dropped to
470 Mbps when we flooded it with excessive traffic.
BOTTOMLINE: Given the prices, these switches are a goodbuy for organizations looking for cost effective productsto put on their LAN-edge. �
HP ProCurve LAN-Edge SwitchesA pair of managed and unmanaged switches that provide a good set of features for deployment on the edge ofa LAN. They’re fit for organizations on a tight budget
Rahul Sah
Reviews
Price: 1400 24G: Rs 16,9501700 24G: Rs. 12,750 (lifetime warranty)
Meant For: LAN-Edge
Key Specs: See Table
Pros: Easy to configure/setup; lifetime warranty
Cons: Drop in throughput when flooded with trafficContact: HP ProCurve Networking, BangaloreTel: 25041424 Email: [email protected]
SMS Buy 131188 to 56767
Key HighlightsHHPP 11770000 2244GG:: Web-based mgmt; 8000 MACaddress table entries; Support for Jumbo frames;Link aggregation; QoS; VLANsHHPP 11440000 2244GG:: 8000 MAC address table entries;support for jumbo frames; auto-negotiation
reviews_HP ProCurve Switches_final.qxp 10/22/2007 10:08 PM Page 124
125 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Reviews
�
Asus have come up with a unique concept of watching
slideshows without having to open a notebook. This
12.1” notebook comes with an external auxiliary display on
the cover of the LCD which lets you view photos, meeting
schedules, phone numbers and play music. Based on Intel’s
latest Santa Rosa platform, it comes with 512 MB RAM and
has a mobile Intel 945 GM Express chipset. It also has a host
of other features such as a 1.3 MP Web
Cam, Bluetooth,
FireWire port,
memory card
reader, etc. It
weighs around 1.7
Kg, which is pretty
comfortable for a fre-
quent trav-
eler.
The key-
pad is well de-
signed and quite comfortable for a 12.1” notebook.
It scored 3419 in PCMark05, which is slightly lesser than
Acer Travel Mate, but still reflects a good high-end application
performance. The lack of a good graphics processor in the
notebook was evident from the score of 225 in 3DMark06 but
a battery backup time of around 4 hours is fabulous; more
than what we got from Acer Travel Mate or Connoi FL-91. Its
Vista performance was also at par though a higher RAM
would have given it an extra edge.
BOTTOMLINE: A limited edition product, it’s meant forthose who desire exclusivity and class.
Asus W5Fe Notebook Price: Rs 94,500 (3 yr warranty)
Key Specs: Core 2 Duo (T7200), 512 MB RAM,1.3 MP Web Cam, FireWire port, 12.1”widescreen, auxiliary LCD display
Contact: Asus Technologies, Mumbai Tel: 67668800 Email: [email protected]
SMS Buy 131191 to 56767
Saurangshu Kanunjna
This new ultraportable TravelMate from Acer is sleek and
light to carry. Acer has given a serious thought toward up-
grading its designs and to be in sync with the current trend,
the inclusion of magnesium alloy into the chassis for robust-
ness is one such example. Strangely, there is no latch to lock
the lid which is a slight disadvantage. Based on the latest In-
tel Santa Rosa Platform it comes with 1 GB RAM and 160 GB
HDD. There is a 12.1” widescreen with native support for
1280x1024 resolution. Con-
nectivity options abound:
there are three USB ports,
FireWire Port, mem-
ory card reader,
Bluetooth etc.
The finger-
print option
provides an
extra layer of se-
curity, though
placement of fingerprint reader could have been a little better
instead of being between the mouse buttons.
Performance wise it fared well in PC Mark05 with a score
of 3644 which is good for this price bracket. This score was
better than that of Connoi FL91. It couldn’t run 3D Mark06
with its onboard graphics, which should not be a concern
atleast for business travelers. In battery test, it fared very well
with a battery backup of 3.32 hr, which is adequate for busi-
ness travelers and is more than what we got from Connoi FL91.
BOTTOMLINE: If your need is of a strong productive ultra-portable notebook, this is a good bet at this price. �
Acer TravelMate 6292Price: Rs 69,999 (1 yr warranty)Key Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7100 (1.8GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD), 12.1” WXGALCD, Media Accelerator X3100, DVD R/W, WLAN,Webcam Contact: Acer India, BangaloreTel: 5219520Email: [email protected] Buy 131190 to 56767
Saurangshu Kanunjna
reviews_Dell Inspiron 1720_Asus W5Fe Notebook_final.qxp 10/22/2007 10:03 PM Page 125
Reviews
Amuch improved upgrade to the previous T60p. It has
been specifically designed to meet high end requirements
of power users. A welcome change is the inclusion of power-
ful NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M graphics instead of ATI
Radeon, leading to a boost in overall graphics experience.
Widescreens are a norm these days and T-series is no different
with a 15.4” LCD. Its design is pretty similar to the other
Thinkpads; however, it’s much lighter and sleeker than the
T60p. What’s more, it has a
plethora of features
such as a
finger print
reader, a secu-
rity chip and a
FireWire
port.
It per-
formed pretty
well in all our tests.
In PC Mark05 a mammoth score of 4751 makes it stand tall
among all other notebooks. The Dell Inspiron 1720,
reviewed elsewhere in this issue, scored 3626 in the same
test. In 3D Mark06, though it didn’t beat the Dell Inspiron
1720 but a score of 1606 is still very high compared to
others. Its Vista performance was second to none and a
battery backup time of 3 hours and 53 mins is sufficient for a
frequent traveler.
BOTTOMLINE: Power users, on the look out for a high per-formance notebook with class and elegance, would savorthis one. �
Lenovo Thinkpad T61p Price: Rs 1,65,000 (1 yr warranty)
Key Specs: Core 2 Duo (T7700, 2.40 GHz), 2 GBRAM, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, 160GB HDD,UWB chip, Fingerprint reader, Vista Ultimate,15.4” LCDContact: Lenovo India, BangaloreTel: 22108490 Email: [email protected]
SMS Buy 131192 to 56767
Saurangshu Kanunjna
Dell’s completely revampled Inspirion 1720 desktop replace-
ment has a fabulous configuration (see specs box). With 4
GB RAM, two 250 GB hard drives, NVIDIA 8600M GT based
graphics, and even a Blue-ray drive, it’s truly a mean machine
for power users. Its overall multimedia experience was en-
thralling. There’s a DirectMedia Button
to instantly access DVD
movies, music,
photo slide-
shows, and
videos, all with
a pair of good
speakers.
One obvi-
ously ex-
pects
it to outperform all players in the league with such a configu-
ration. In 3D Mark06 however, it beat Lenovo T61p’s (also re-
viewed in this issue) score of 1606, with a score of 2730,
clearly showing its gaming supremacy. In PC Mark05, it
scored 3626, which is high, but lower than T61p’s score of
4751.
In Battery Mark4, it gave a battery backup of around 4
hours and 15 min, which is 30 min more than the T61p.
BOTTOMLINE: It’s a lucrative option for power users, ifthey’re willing to pay the price. �
Dell Inspiron 1720 Price: Rs 1,81,335 (1 yr warranty)Key Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (T7500, 2.20 GHz), 4GB RAM, two 250 GB HDDs, Blu-ray drive, 17”widescreen, large keyboard with separate numerickeypad, 2 MP Web-cam, Bluetooth 2, 4 USB ports,memory card reader, FireWireContact: Dell India, Bangalore, Tel: 25068026, Website: www.dell.co.inSMS Buy 131193 to 56767
Saurangshu Kanunjna
126 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
reviews_thinkpad +acer travelmate 6292.qxp 10/23/2007 7:58 PM Page 1
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Reviews
This 15.4” inch notebook from Connoi is based on the lat-
est Intel Santa Rosa Platform and comes with 1 GB of
RAM and 80 GB HDD. Connoi notebooks have been bulky and
robust when it comes to their build and looks, and this too is
no different. But they have worked on the overall outlook of
the notebook and have improved its design, though they could
have still worked on the quality of the Touchpad and the but-
tons. Nevertheless this one hosts loads of features, be it Blue-
tooth, DVD R/W, or Web Cam, it has all that one can ask for
at this price range. It
came preloaded
withVista Ultimate.
Performance wise, you can’t expect a 43k notebook to out-
perform any of the top league players, nonetheless its per-
formance was satisfactory within its range. A score of 2945
in PC Mark is very good for this range of product, though it is
less than that of Acer TravelMate. It didn’t come with any
dedicated graphics processor so the low score in 3D Mark06 is
obvious. In Battery Mark4 it gave a battery backup of about
2.56 hr which is good.
BOTTOMLINE: If you overlook the weight of 2.9 kg, this isa good option for budget conscious business executives �
Connoi FL91 Price: Rs 43,500 (1 yr warranty)
Key Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (T7100, 1.8 GHz, 1 GB DDR-II RAM, 80 GB HDD, 15.4” WSXGAwidescreen, Intel Graphics GM 965, BroadcomGigabit LAN, DVD R/WContact: Connoiseur Electronics, BangaloreTel: 41152202 Email: [email protected] Buy 131194 to 56767
Saurangshu Kanunjna
DDR2 RAM has reached its maximum limit, supporting 1066
million data transfers per second with a peak transfer rate
of 8,500 Gbps. But with new OSs like Vista, 3D cards and gam-
ing applications, there’s demand for even higher transfer speeds.
That’s why RAM manufacturers are coming out with DDR3
RAM. We received a pair of 1 GB modules of Kingston’s
latest HyperX DDR3 RAM They have blue col-
ored heat spreaders that work quite
well, preventing the RAM
from overheating.
The
modules support
1.9 GHz frequency, and we
tested them in dual mode on a PC
with an Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66 GHz
processor, an Asus P5k3 Deluxe motherboard, and ATI
Radeon X1950XTX 512 MB graphics card. We ran PCMark 05,
which does a series of read, write, copy and latency tests with a
varying load of 16 MB to 4 KB. The RAM modules scored 5851
PCMarks, which is quite impressive considering the 5900 PC-
Marks scored by Kingston’s DDR2 800 MHz RAM modules we
reviewed last year. This clearly indicates the performance that
DDR3 RAM modules can achieve. This performance however,
will come at the cost of compatibility. They are incompatible
with DDR2 RAM slots owing to their different key notch
location.
BOTTOMLINE: Overall, these RAM modules give excellentperformance, but their cost is still on the higher side compared to equivalent DDR2 modules. �
Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM Price: 47,000 (Lifetime warranty)
Key Specs: Excellent performance, supports 45 nm based processors
Contact: Avnet India, Ingram Micro, KobianElectronics, Transtek InfowaysEmail:[email protected],Website: www.kingston.com/indiaSMS Buy 131195 to 56767
Karan Bajaj
Reviews Connoi+ _Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM.qxp 10/22/2007 9:45 PM Page 1
129 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Reviews
PurpleNova Pro is a software that let’s you share your content
online securely and directly along with a feature to host web-
sites and web applications. For this, you don’t need to have a static
public IP. Anybody on a DSL line with a dynamic IP can use it. Each
file hosted through PurpleNova is assigned a URL that can be mailed
and shared with others who could access the hosted content from
their web browsers. The only key requirement is that the PC that
hosts content must always remain connected to the Internet.
The interface to the software is simple and allows all hosting
functionality through one window. Files can be hosted using Files
and Folders tab. A private access option lets the content to be
viewed over SSL. If
you have registered a
domain name, but
don’t have a static IP
or webspace to host
it, then you can use
PurpleNova for the
job. Simply create
your website, map the domain name to it, and you’re online. This
can be a good option for organizations who want to test out their
websites over the Internet without first purchasing hosting space.
The way it works is quite simple. All you need is a local web
server to host your sites. It supports Apache, Tomcat, and IIS. Even
a desktop OS like XP comes with IIS built-in. Simply upload your
website to this web server, and use PurpleNova to create a URL for
it. Only one thing to keep in mind here is that the names of all
hosted apps should be in lowercase.
BOTTOMLINE: Good option for small businesses to hosttheir web site and share content among clients. �
PurpleNova Pro Price: $4.99 (per month)Key Specs: Web hosting of content, SSL protocolsupport for private content; Local web serverapps hostingContact: Infinishare Technologies, PuneTel: 23095855Website: [email protected] Buy 131196 to 56767
Rahul Sah
reviews_perple nova_final.qxp 10/23/2007 9:57 PM Page 1
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Reviews
This NAS box from Buffalo provides a convenient storage for
SOHO environments. It comes with four 7200 rpm, 250 GB
SATA hard drives, which sum up to 1 TB of storage capacity. The
box supports RAID levels 0,1,5 and 10. It has both Gigabit Ether-
net and USB ports to connect it on a network as a NAS or directly
to a PC as a DAS. This TeraStation Live can also be used as a stor-
age server over the Inter-
net. For this, it has a built
in FTP server for easy ex-
change of files. Plus, it
even allows you to share
your files and folders over
the Internet. For this Buf-
falo has setup a separate
website that allows peer
to peer connectivity be-
tween different TeraSta-
tion Live boxes.
To test the NAS we transferred 100 GB of data between the NAS
and a PC with a 400 GB, 7200 rpm HDD. Transfer to the PC took
1 hour and 27 mins, while the transfer back to the NAS took 1
hour 36 secs. FTP transfer however was much faster, and took
only 57 mins. We also ran NetBench and got a maximum
throughput of 33 MBps with RAID 0, which is pretty average as
compared to the cheaper TeraStation Pro II (reviewed in June
2007). The latter also has a higher transfer rate.
BOTTOMLINE: Choose this if you need a high capacity NASbox for a small office. �
Buffalo TeraStation Live NAS Price: Rs 55,590 (2 yr warranty)
Key Specs: RAID 0/1/5/10, 7200 rpm, powerbackup, hot swappable drives, web-based filesharing, FTP server
Contact: Advent Infotech, Delhi Tel: 41436752, Email: [email protected]; www.buffalo-asia.com
SMS Buy 131198 to 56767
Rakesh Sharma
The Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP edition motherboard comes
with integrated WiFi, which can be configured in software
access point or station mode. Like most high-end motherboards,
this also has a heat pipe running from North to South bridge, but
unlike others, it has an extra fan mounted over the heat pipe for
extra cooling. The board supports up to 8 GB DDR3 RAM, has 2
PCI Express x16, 2 PCI Express x1, and 3 PCI 2.2 slots along with
dual Gigabit LAN controller. It has 6 SATA ports which support
RAID 0 and 1. Plus, it supports 2 external SATA ports, 1
FireWire, and 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports. It
doesn’t have a PS2 port for
mouse, so one
needs
to
get a
USB mouse
to work with.
The perform-
ance of this mother-
board is good. We tested it with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz
processor, 1 GB DDR3 RAM and an ATI Radeon X1950 series
graphics card. In 3D Mark 05 and 06, it scored 12746 and 6538,
respectively, which are good scores. As compared to Gigabyte
P35-DQ6 (also reviewed this month) the performance is a little
better. In PCMark 05 also, it scored 7019 PCMarks, which is
better than most high-end motherboards. In Doom 3, this
motherboard clocked up to 216 fps and its score in
CINEBENCH10 was also very good.
BOTTOM LINE: Being a 45 nm processor-ready motherboard
and having DDR3 memory support, makes it a worthy buy.
Asus P5K3 Deluxe Motherboard Price: Rs 17,100 (3 yrs warranty)Key Specs: WiFi, Dual Gbe LAN ports, 6 USBports, 2 PCI-E X16 ports, DDR3, CrossFire, meantfor gaming PCs, support for Intel’s 45 nm CPUsContact: ASUS Technology Tel: 6766 8800, Email: [email protected] Buy 131191 to 56767
Rakesh Sharma
�
130 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
reviews_TeraStation Live NAS box_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:57 AM Page 1
131 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Reviews
This high-end gamers’ board is based on the all new Intel
P35/ICH9R chipset, which allows an FSB of 1.3 GHz. This
chipset has support for DDR 3 RAM, but this board doesn’t
come with this featuure. The board also supports 45 nm CPUs,
and comes with 4 memory slots that support up to 8 GB DDR2
RAM. Like other boards in its price range, this also has a heat-
pipe running from North to South bridge, for better cooling.
Apart from 6 SATA II ports, it also has 2 GSATA II (Gigabyte
SATA) connectors, which support RAID 0, 1 and JBOD.
This motherboard was a good performer. We tested it with
an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, and Radeon
X1950 series graphics card. It gave good performance in all the
benchmarks, but the results were slightly lower than the Asus
P5K3 motherboard (also reviewed this month). In 3D Mark 05
and 06, its scores were 12306 and 6021, respectively. In PC
Mark 2005, it scored 6006 PCMarks. In Doom 3, it scored 196
fps, while in CINEBENCH 10 it clocked 3785 CB-CPU.
BOTTOM LINE: Overall, though its scores are slightlylower than P5K3, its lower price makes up for that, andmakes it a worthy buy. �
Gigabyte P35-DQ6 Motherboard Price: Rs 15,500 (3 yrs warranty)
Key Specs: New P35/ICH 9R chipset, ATICrossFire and 45 nm CPU support, 2 PCI, 2 PCI-E x16, & 3 x1 slots, 6 SATA II ports, RAID 0, 1, 5,& 10; 12 USB, 2 FireWire, & GbE port
Contact: Gigabyte Technology, MumbaiTel: 30616666, Email: [email protected]
SMS Buy 131179 to 56767
Rakesh Sharma
This SLI ready motherboard having NVIDIA nForce 650i
chipset supports Intel Core2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Core
2 Duo, Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron D processors. This
motherboard is meant for budget conscious buyers, especially
those on the lookout for high end performance and gaming
motherboards. It features 2 PCI Express x16 slots, 2 PCI Ex-
press x1 and three 32-bit PCI v2.3 compliant slots. Apart from
these it also has 2 IDE, 4 SATA and 1 onboard Gigabit LAN
port. On the back panel one can find 4 USB, 1 serial and 2 PS/2
ports.
We tested it using Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz processor with
1 GB RAM, Windows XP SP1 and 120
GB HDD. In 3D Mark 05 and
06 the scores were
12,664
3D
Marks and
6,466 3D Marks,
which are even better
than the high-end Asus P5K3 (reviewed this month). In PC
Mark 05 this motherboard crossed Gigabyte P53-DQ6 (re-
viewed this month) with a score of 6,979 PCMarks. In Doom3,
it gave a maximum of 198.5 FPS which is again a good score.
In CINEBENCH 10, when rendering with a single CPU, it gave
2,721 CB-CPU and rendering with two CPUs it gave 5007 CB-
CPU, slightly less than Asus P5K3.
BOTTOMLINE: A great deal if you’re looking for a highperformance motherboard with decent features at acheap price.
ECS NF650iSLIT-A Motherboard Price: Rs 4,500 ( 3 yr warranty ) Key Specs: SLI support, Gigabit Ethernet, IntelCore 2 Extreme processor Contact: ZENITH TECHNOLOGIES, MumbaiTel: 28377300Email: [email protected] Buy 131180 to 56767
Rakesh Sharma
�
reviews_Gigabyte P35-DQ6_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:24 PM Page 1
Books
132 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Targeted basically at IT professionals, this book
provides 7 guidelines (mantras) to steer a proj-
ect to success. With its easy and lucid language, this
book gives a reader the sense to correlate himself
with the given examples and use them in his life. This
book concentrates on project management and pres-
ents an innovative approach to managing project
challenges. The first section begins with prospective
vulnerabilities in project management. The subse-
quent section explains how an exemplary project
management framework can be rolled out in a large organiza-
tion having 1000+ PMs/PLs, across four geographies, viz.,
India, the US, the UK, and the APAC. The example uses a unique
snowballing methodology and an innovative concept called
Chainge Management. In the last segment, the book explains
the conceptual base of each of the seven mantras.
Steering Project Success
�
This book teaches you how to program in C. One of
the major features of this book is inclusion of
C 99. The book also includes two new chapters that
discuss how to debug C programs and give the reader
an overview of the pervasive field of Object Oriented
Programming or OOP.
In all, this book contains 19 chapters that cover
fundamentals of C, how to compile and run your first
program, input and output operations, and about their
advance features.
The last two chapters cover debugging techniques. The
popular gdb debugger is used to explain the debugging process.
The last chapter of the book covers Object Oriented Program-
ming fundamentals. All chapters contain really helpful exer-
cises. We can say that this book is a good tutorial and it really
helps you to brush up your C programming. �
If you know a little bit of VBA programming or
even if you’re a fresher, then this book can help
you get the most out of your Microsoft Office Suite.
It teaches you how to automate routine office tasks
using basic VBA programming.
This book tells you about how to write programs
that will let you control Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
Access database, and even Outlook e-mail. There is
a bundle of examples in this book, all based on the Office
2007 applications.
A few topics that have been covered in this book are Pro-
gram Access Databases, Automate Document Backups, Create
Advanced Email Rules, Build Custom Dialog Boxes, Control
Macro Security and more. Overall, a great book for developers
of all levels wanting to program Microsoft Office Suites. �
Author: Madhavan S Rao
Price: Rs 450
Pages: 228
Distributor: Tata McGraw-Hill, DelhiTel: 4383400 E-mail: priyanka_ [email protected] Buy 131151 to 56767
Author: Stephen G Kochan
Price: Rs 299
Pages: 543
Distributor: Pearson Education, DelhiTel: 43030215 E-mail: [email protected] Buy 131152 to 56767
Authors: Paul McFedriesel
Price: Rs 350
Pages: 406
Distributor: Pearson Education, DelhiTel: 43030215E-mail: [email protected] SMS Buy 131153 to 56767
Programming in C (Third edition)
VBA for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
book review_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:22 AM Page 144
133 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
25 New Information InfrastructureProductsIn one of its major Indian launches recently, EMC announced
25 new information infrastructure products and solutions.
Here are some of the important ones. The CLARiiON CX3-10
FC/iSCSI System that can scale to 30 TB of capacity. It features
combined Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI connectivity within the
same array. The Symmetrix DMX-4 series features an end-to-
end 4 Gbps architecture, a new FC point-to-point back-end.
They support both high speed FC disk drives and new low-cost
750 GB SATA II disk drives that, according to the company, can
reduce energy consumption by up to 33 percent. The newest
generation of EMC Centera, a content addressed storage (CAS)
system, which has specifically been designed with low-power
processors and chipsets, adaptive cooling and more efficient
power supplies to reduce energy consumption, while also offer-
ing 50 percent more storage capacity per node using new 750
GB SATA disk drives. EMC NetWorker support for De-duplica-
tion and Continuous Data Protection (CDP), RecoverPoint,
Rainfinity File Management Appliance (FMA), and 6 enterprise
content management (ECM) platforms based on Documentum
are the other few that need a mention.
SMS Buy131122 to 56767
News & Launches
TI's Floating-Point Starter KitTexas Instruments has introduced floating-point
TMS320F2833x digital signal controllers (DSCs) by intro-
ducing the F28335 eZdsp starter kit. Now sampling, the
F28335 controller is a floating-point DSC, supplying devel-
opers of industrial systems with the inherent floating-point
advantages of performance and simplified software develop-
ment over fixed-point devices. The simplified software devel-
opment and performance boost common to floating-point
processors offer better power efficiency for greener indus-
trial applications. For example, the F2833x devices enable
variable speed alternating current (AC) drives, which use
one-eighth the energy compared to constant speed counter-
parts. The floating-point devices also enable clean energy
through solar power inverters that more efficiently convert
energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels.
SMS Buy131123 to 56767
ProCurve's 8212 Core SwitchProCurve Networking has announced the availability of an
enterprise-class network core switch, the ProCurve Switch
8212zl. The core switch completes ProCurve’s core-to-edge
network solution that unifies network technology, infra- �
news_November 07_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:03 PM Page 133
News & Launches
Backup on VMware by EMCHere comes a combo of data de-duplication backup solutions
from EMC, designed for virtualized environments. New EMC
Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware Infrastructure is fully virtu-
alized de-duplication solution for backup and recovery. In addi-
tion, EMC is introducing the new EMC Avamar Data Store, a
complete, packaged solution consisting of leading EMC Avamar
data de-duplication backup and recovery software running on
pre-configured EMC-certified hardware.
SMS Buy131013 to 56767
AMD’s ambitious x86 ProcessorAMD introduces its much talked about native x86 microproces-
sor, Quad-Core AMD Opteron. It is specifically designed for the
energy hogging data centers, and promises good performance-
per-watt for servers. According to the company, it improves en-
ergy efficiency by 50 percent in integer and floating-point
operations, enhances virtualization performance, and protects
investment via a user-centric approach enabling non-disruptive
transitions from dual- to quad-core within the same power and
thermal envelopes to help keep infrastructure costs down.
SMS Buy131014 to 56767
CISCO presents 802.11n wirelessCisco introduced an integrated 802.11n solution designed to com-
bine wireless performance and reliability with simplicity of deploy-
ment. Cisco’s Unified Wireless Network offering includes the modu-
lar Cisco Aironet 1250 Series access point, an enterprise-class 11n
access point, as well as the 48 Gbps scalable Cisco Catalyst 6500-
based wireless local-area network controller system, and wired and
wireless services with the Release 4.2. Cisco will also deliver, via its
family of Catalyst switches, the ability to fully power the dual-radio
Aironet 1250 Series from a single Ethernet port.
SMS Buy131015 to 56767
NetApp’s new FAS appliancesNetwork Appliance unveiled FAS2020 and FAS2050 of its new
FAS2000 series of fabric attached storage. With a host of connec-
tivity options and support for almost all prevalent protocols, it of-
fers deployment versatility and connectivity to satisfy
your data protection, recovery, and storage scalability needs. It
supports dual controller active-active (HA) throughput, high-per-
formance SAS infrastructure, 4 Gigabit FC from end to end, and
onboard remote platform management.
SMS Buy131016 to 56767
news_october 07_anil.qxp 9/24/2007 12:37 AM Page 126
147 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7
News & Launches
134 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
structure, software, operation, man-
agement and support. The switch
comes with ProCurve’s lifetime war-
ranty and it is based on HP-developed
ProVision ASIC technology, a highly
integrated architecture that delivers
redundancy and resiliency. ProCurve
also announced the ProCurve Wireless
Edge Services zl Module that adds cen-
tralized wireless local area network
(WLAN) configuration, management
and advanced wireless services to the
8212zl core switch and 5400zl edge
switch family.
SMS Buy131121 to 56767
SNIA completes 10 years,reaffirms its
missionThe Storage Networking Industry Asso-
ciation (SNIA) unveiled an expanded
mission and vision that positions the
association to lead the industry in de-
veloping and promoting standards,
technologies, and educational services
to empower organizations in the man-
agement of information. Unveiled on
the association's 10th anniversary, the
SNIA also launched new branding,
which includes a website redesign and
a new logo in support of the associa-
tion's forward-looking mission and vi-
sion. SNIA India was formally
launched in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai
and Pune and now holds membership
strength of over 87 members. Owing to
its superlative performance, it has re-
cently been awarded independent sta-
tus by SNIA International Board.
Symantec’s Storage UnitedSymantec has launched Storage United
that provides a comprehensive layer of
data protection, storage management
and archiving software. As a result en-
terprises will have flexibility and con-
trol over their storage and server
architecture and hardware purchases.
The launch was announced at Syman-
tec Vision,2007, in Mumbai, an event
organized by Symantec. The event fo-
cused on various security problems
faced by individuals and enterprises
and guided them with various solu-
tions and ways to solve through differ-
ent sessions. Delegates could also get a
first hand demo of some of Symantec’s
latest products and
solutions.
SMS Buy131124 to 56767
HP's Green InitiativeHP has announced the availability of
its Adaptive Infrastructure services,
part of its green initiative for making
existing and upcoming data centers
more energy efficient, in India. The
solution offering includes Dynamic
Smart Cooling (DSC) technology that
helps tackle one of the most critical
issues in today’s data centers, that is,
power and cooling. DSC enables to
change data center energy costs from a
fixed to a variable cost, significantly
increasing IT scaling headroom.
BladeSystem c-Class that, according to
the company, uses up to 27 percent less
power than competition products in
similar configurations. The company
claims that with this blade server offer-
ing, an average enterprise data center
can realize over a three-year period:
system acquisition cost savings of up to
41 percent; data center facilities cost
savings of up to 60 percent; and initial
system setup time cost savings of up to
96 percent. HP claims that its 'green'
storage technology can cut storage
array power and cooling costs in data
centers by 50 percent, besides it offers
consultancy to harness opportunity for
power savings through server and stor-
age virtualization.
SMS Buy131125 to 56767 �
news_november 07_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:05 PM Page 134
The Revenue Generator
� Very easy to implement � Available in convenient models such
as Parallel Port & USB� Supports Standalone, Networks &
Web applications effectively� Supports DOS / All Windows
Versions / Linux / Novell under all popular programming languages.
Sentry Hardware Lock helps protectyour Software from piracy &
lets you earn more money rather than a Pirate !
135 A CYBERMEDIA PublicationPCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
ADVERTISERS’ INDEXAdvt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pg. No. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pims Code
ABP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181039
Accenture . . . . . . . . . . . www.accenture.com/india . . . . . . . . . . 85 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181085
Adline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.adlinesystems.com . . . . . . . . . . 115 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810115
Akna Infotech . . . . . . . . www.aknaInfotech.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181023
APC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.apc.com/promo . . . . . . . . . . . . . IFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181000
Carizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.carizen.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181079
Cat computers . . . . . . . www.quickheal.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810121
DSF quarter page . . . . . www.gadgets.in/battery-adapter . . . . . 129 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810129
ELITECORE . . . . . . . . . www.cyberoam.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181037
Eset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.eset.com/partner . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181025
Evolve Brands Pvt. Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181007
F-Secure . . . . . . . . . . . . www.f-secure.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181027
Gigabyte . . . . . . . . . . . . www.gigabyte.in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181055
IBM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ibm.com Cover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136A IBC . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810IBC
ICICI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181021
Intec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.intecbilling.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . BC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810BC
Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . www.icplindia.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181027
Lenovo . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.lenovo.com/in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181005
Manipal Univweral . . . . www.mediamangroup.com . . . . . . . . . 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181033
Mediaman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181091
Microsoft . . . . . . . . . . . . www.microsoft.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181003
Microsoft India Ltd.- . . . www.microsoft.com/india/connections/tac 3,9,17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181003
Quantum link . . . . . . . . . www.qlc.in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181031
Rashi Peripherals . . . . . www.procurve.com/partners . . . . . . . 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181013
Reliance/ LD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181013
resellerBrand . . . . . . . . www.resellerbrand.ws . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28,29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181028
Ricoh www.ricoh.co.in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181065
Samsung India Pvt. Ltd. Email: [email protected] . 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181001
Soft Aid . . . . . . . . . . . . www.visitor-management.net . . . . . . . 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181012
Valrack . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.valrack.in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181073
Viewsonic . . . . . . . . . . . www.in.viewsonic.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810117
Wyse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.wyse.co.in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810134
advertisers indexOcto07.qxp 10/24/2007 1:44 AM Page 135
RFID technology needs no introduction. It’s beenaround for a long time, and one has heard ofmany success stories of how it’s helped many
organizations in smoothening their inventory manage-ment and asset management. What’s new is Microsoft’sentry into this hot area, with an interesting solution.Called BizTalk RFID, the solution is meant to allow Microsoft’s partners to develop customized RFIDbased solutions for customers. Apart from the fact thatRFID is a hot area, one key reason Microsoft has en-tered this space is because this space is still highly frag-mented. There’s no common standard being followedby anybody, nor is there a common set of protocols.
Everybody follows their own communications pro-tocols and standards. Therefore, it becomes very difficult for one to manage a RFID based solutions. Microsoft aims to tackle all these challenges by provid-ing a common platform that provides a uniform way todiscover, communicate, and manage RFID devices.The platform architecture is such that it can allow allkinds of RFID devices—current ones, older generationones, next generation ones, etc, to be incorporated easily. For this, a special Device Service Provider Inter-
face has been added, which provides a generic set ofAPIs for RFID hardware vendors to ensure that theirproducts work seamlessly on it.Next big thing in the architecture of BizTalk RFID is anEngine and Runtime layer. This allows developers tocreate, deploy and manage logical RFID processes.They can build complete workflow solution for an organization on this engine. Moreover, Microsoft isalso providing adapters to integrate RFID solutionswith other LoB applications like ERP, Warehouse Man-agement Systems, or other similar apps. There are many advantages to this approach, as pointedout by MS. One is that it’s based on the .NET platform,so developers already have a familiar platform to develop RFID based solutions. Second, the solutioncan work well with other MS applications like SQLServer, BizTalk server, Windows Workflow Founda-tion, and even Microsoft Dynamics. Lastly, the solutionprovides two other tools-- an administrative consolecalled “RFID Manager” and a ’Rule Composer tool,’which as the name suggests is meant to compose rules.
The solution sounds promising, and many success-ful solutions have been developed using the sameworldwide. Whether it will succeed in India remains tobe seen.
136 A CYBERMEDIA Publication
Extraedge
PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7
Microsoft’s BizTalk RFID
Saurangshu Kanunjna
A new solution to help organizations build RFID based business solutions. It separates the business logic fromthe underlying RFID devices, making it easier to build RFID based workflows
�
An RFID device being shown using BizTalk RFID as a background
solution for tracing shipment of goods
Sourc
e:
Mic
rosoft C
rop., 2
006
ExtraEdge Biztalk RFID_LP2.qxp 10/23/2007 11:24 PM Page 136
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