PC Quest Nov 2007

content-nov'07_final.
qxp 10/24/2007 4:00 PM Page 4
In this Issue November 2007
62 COVER STORY
Strategies for Healthy WANs
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.
30
TECHNOLOGY
Wireless: The Story So Far

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.
HANDS ON DEVELOPER
The Ultimate Boot CD 100
Implementing Ajax with ZK 84
Masking with Corel Photo-Paint 101 Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET Futures 88
Optimize Your Virtual Machines 102 Efficient Unit-testing in Java with AgitarOne 92
Spam Busting in Windows Vista 103 Block Offensive Language from Your Site 94
Add More Fire to Your Firefox 104 Query Style Programming with Orcas 96
HTTP Fingerprinting Simplified 105
DO IT YOURSELF
Linux Online Aware Taskbar 106 Running Linpack on Windows Compute 110
Add Liveliness to Web Pages with 107 Cluster
Photoshop CS3 Cover design: Venkatesulu V Reddy
Using Explorer as Shell 109 Discussions and Support @

http://forums.pcquest.com
EXTRAEDGE pcquest@cybermedia.co.infor magazine related queries
Microsoft BizTalk RFID 136 cdrompcquest@cybermedia.co.infor CD related queries
2 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

content-nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 4:00 PM Page 6
In this Issue November 2007
ENTERPRISE IMPLEMENTATION 14 VERTICAL FOCUS
Remote Application Streaming 41 Bank on IT to KeepYour

Virtualization in Windows Server 2008 44 Money Safe
IIS 7: A Modular Approach 48 Banking and financial services industry has been
Linux Rescue Box 51 at the forefront in adopting IT. Let’s identify issues
Keep an Eye on Your Code 54 they face after having used IT, and what’s the way
forward. We bring inputs from CIOs of leading
Host Intrusion Detection with OSSEC 59 banks and find out how they’re coping up with
new challenges.
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How to Keep Your Apps Healthy Lenovo ThinkPad T61p Notebook 126
You could implement the best application in the world, Dell Inspiron 1720 Notebook 126
but if it is not tuned to users’ requirements, it’s bound to
fail. The story will identify critical issues that affect app
Connoi FL91 Notebook 128
performance, tools for monitoring and managing the Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM 128
various apps, and their implementation PurpleNova Pro 129
Buffalo TeraStation Live NAS 130
Asus P5K3 Deluxe Motherboard 130
Gigabyte P35-DQ6 Motherboard 131
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Books 132

editorial_Nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 7:17 PM Page 6
Leading Edge
Editor-in-Chief: Shyam Malhotra

Chief Editor: Prasanto K Roy
Editor: Anil Chopra
Copy Desk
Operations Editor: Adeesh Sharma
Asstt Editor: Manu Priyam
Sub Editors: Deepshika Yadav, Richa Sharma
Anil Chopra, Editor

Design
Manager: Jose PM
Asstt Manager: Venkatesulu Reddy
Design & Layout: Ravi RG, Mrityunjoy Guha The Spirit of Innovation
CYBERMEDIA LABS
W
hat would you do if you caught continue doing so in the future. The one
Managers—Technology Research:
Anindya Roy, Sanjay Majumder an employee chatting with that’s hot off the platter today are social net-
Sr Tech Analysts: Hitesh Raj Bhagat,
Swapnil Arora
friends on an instant messen- working technologies, also called Web 2.0.
Technology Analysts: Rahul Gupta, Rahul Sah, ger? You’ll block it because it’s against com- Most organizations today end up block-
Rakesh Sharma, Saurangshu Kanunjana,
Sulabh Puri, Karan Bajaj pany policy, chokes Internet bandwidth, ing Orkut or YouTube, the torch bearers of
Contributors: Vinod Unny, and wastes productive time. However, next Web 2.0 technologies, as they eat up pro-
Shekhar Govindarajan
IT Correspondents: Jasmine Desai, time, you’ll find another employee using ductivity and network bandwidth. But a lot
Vishnu Anand
Reviews Asstts: Vijay Chauhan, Suman Guha
something else to interact with others, say of enterprise software vendors have taken
Multimedia Developer: Jayanta Ghosh Orkut or blogging.You’ll block that also queue from the concepts behind these sites
Admin Asstt: Shiv Kumar Maurya
only to find them using some other mecha- and introduced similar features within
PRINT & CIRCULATION SERVICES
nism to communicate, maybe a new P2P their own products.
Associate VP: NC George application. Take the latest versions of any collabo-
GM, Print Services: T Srirengan All these events don’t happen ration or messaging suite from any vendor
Reader Service: Dipesh Kothari, Pooja
Bharadwaj, Sarita Sridhar
overnight, as new social networking tech- worth its name today, and you’ll find it to be
Circulation Service: Sudhir Arora nologies take time to develop. But while filled with Web 2.0 technologies.
Press co-ordination: Harak Singh they develop, many other interesting things Many other trends are also in the mak-
also happen in the background.While IT ing, which just might make it big. For a long
CENTRAL MARKETING TEAM
VP (Sales & Marketing): Asim Raina managers were busy banning Yahoo! Or time, enterprises have been banning USB
GM (Marketing): Sameer Vinerkar MSN Instant Messengers, somebody, some- drives from being used in the company due
Product Manager: Prasanna Srivastava
Asstt Manager (Product): Chandan K Singh
where was busy adding IM capabilities to a to security reasons. But what if the same
Product Executive: Ankush Dev Mail server for the same IT manager. Later, USB drive could carry the entire desktop of
Asstt Managers (Events): Ravi Kant,
Vimpy Choudhary the same IT manager who was blocking a user? This way, users could be more pro-
Asstt Manager (Ad Coordination): IMs ends up deploying that mail server for ductive on the move, without having to
Jayant Singhal
the enterprise for official use. carry laptops. That’s a trend more com-
ACCOUNTS & COMMERCIAL This is not a new trend. In fact, many monly known as desktop virtualization.
Sr Manager, Commercial: C P Kalra technologies we see being used in enter- Likewise, most organizations block P2P
prises today were at one point of time criti- software, but today there are companies
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
Pradeep Gupta on behalf of CyberMedia (India)
cized or banned from use. I’m not saying busy creating new avatars of the same
Ltd, printed at Repro India Ltd, Plot No 50/2, that organizations are following the wrong ‘menace’, which will be very beneficial for
T.T.C. MIDC, Industrial Area, Mahape, Navi practice. by banning such social network- organizations. How about file sharing or
Mumbai, India, published from D-74, Panchsheel
ing technologies.After all, such social net- web site hosting using a P2P software from
Enclave, New Delhi-17. Chief Editor: Prasanto K
Roy. Distributors in India: Mirchandani & Co, working technologies do cause disruption. a PC, or downloading a new patch on one
Mumbai. All rights reserved. No part of this What’s important to realize here is that machine and distributing it across?
publication may be reproduced by any means
many consumer driven technologies have So there are two sides to everything,
without prior written permission.
Print Services: Dot Print, Delhi. entered the enterprise world this way, and and we should also see the better side and
revolutionized the face of IT; and more will appreciate this spirit of innovation!

editorial_nov'07_final.qxp 10/24/2007 7:29 PM Page 8
This Issue
BANGALORE
GM - Sales (South): HS Shenoy
Asstt Manager (Sales): Bhagya Raj,
Rupesh Kumar
Asstt Manager (Marketing): Raghavendra
Support: Guruprasad S
205, 2nd Floor, # 73, Shree Complex,
St.Johns Road, Tel: 22861511
CHENNAI Swapnil Arora

Bureau Manager: Saravanan Kumar Issue Editor for this month
5B, 6th Floor, Gemini Parsn Apts,
599 Mount Road, Tel: 28221712
KOLKATA
AI and EI: Have they Finally Arrived?
Bureau Manager: Sandeep Roy Chowdhury During the past few months a new soft- quired a caretaker to learn new things.
Sales Executive: Sumitendra Das
307, 3rd Floor, Ballygunj A.C. Market, 46/31/1 ware robot was in news, which could under- As I was about to write this, I saw an-
Gariahat Road Tel: 65250117 stand jokes. Developed at the University of other piece of news that said that in the fu-
MUMBAI
Cincinnati, this 'bot' is a small example of so- ture, marriages between humans and robots
Regional Manager (West): Sachin Mhashilkar ciable computing. Its researchers say that (androids) would also be possible and AI
Asstt Mgrs (Sales): Sameer Gore,
bots like this one can bring a sense of humor would be used to ensure they both under-
Maitreyee Karnik Support Team: Gajpal Rana,
Raju More, Savita Dias, Vijoy D’nold to physical robots like Honda's ASIMO, stand each other. Not much information
Road No 16, D 7/1 MIDC, which can act as human companions. about this is available and whether re-
Andheri (East) Tel: 28387271
This genre of robots are known as ‘Affec- searchers have done anything more practical
DELHI tive Systems’, but you’ll be surpirsed to know on this or not is still a matter of speculation.
Regional Manager (North): Vinodh Kaliappan
Asstt Manager (Sales): Amit Singh that they have been around for decades. The worst part is that researchers themselves
Asstt Manager (Marketing): Rahul Chatterjee These systens can recognize and respond to don’t understand why a human would like to
Marketing Executive: Arindam Rudra
Support Team: Anubha Srivastava,
human voice and display emotions such as do something like this.Well, I would like to
Gaurav Aggarwal happiness, anger, etc. Similar to this was ask them why are they wasting time on this
D-74 Panchsheel Enclave Tel: 41751234 Philips iCat, which was once the most talked research if they don’t know what it’s for. I
PUNE about commercial smart companion. Unfor- mean they could spend all their precious re-
Asstt Manager (Sales): Vandana Chauhan tunately, it met with limited success, but it sources in solving some of the real problems
D/4 Sukhwani Park North Main Road,
Koregaon Tel: 64004065 could generate many facial expressions and in the world.
SECUNDERABAD recognize objects and faces with a camera God knows what future is going to shape
Asstt Manager (Marketing): Chidambaram K installed on its head. up to be, but something like this at this mo-
#5,6 1st Floor, Srinath Commercial Complex, The best commercial robot I have ever ment definitely seems odd, especially when
SD Road. Tel: 27841970
seen was Sony's AIBO. It could do all sorts of even a decent usable commercial AI robot
SINGAPORE things from checking email, obeying the seems far away from reality. It’s been long
Associate VP: Naveen Barsainya
owner’s instructions to even playing football. said that robots will be able to learn emo-
Asstt Manager (Sales & Marketing):
RibkaWiryanto Sadly there weren’t many takers for it, and tions from humans, both right and wrong.As
1North Bridge Road, # 24-09 Sony suffered huge losses.As a result, it went this Emotional Intelligence evolves further,
High Street Center Tel: +65-63369142 out of production. Since then we haven’t robots could even learn to fake their emo-
INTERNATIONAL
seen any appealing commercial AI robots. tions and things could possibly go on as far
Manager (Sales): Deepak Sharma Another robot considered to be emotion- you can stretch your imagination.All said
Tel: +919811791110 ally intelligent was developed at MIT some- and done, most of this area remains in re-
Corporate Office
time back—the sociable humanoid known search, so it seems like it’ll gonna be a while
Cyber House, B-35, Sec 32, Gurgaon, NCR Delhi-
122001. Tel: 0124-4031234, Fax: 2380694. as Kismet. For running it required 15 net- before smart companion becomes a reality.
worked computers, out of which nine ma- Lastly, our Technology expert, Sanjay
OVERSEAS AGENTS–US: Emily Ospensen,
chines were used to control its vision Majumder, has moved on within the organi-
Worldwide Sales Director CMP Worldwide Media
Networks One Park Plaza # 700, Irvine, CA 92614 processing, eyes, neck, etc. It was however zation. I wish him all the best for future.
Tel: 949-223-3632, eospenso@ cmp.com. able to figure out human emotions and re- We’re gonna miss you Sanju!

msg board_final.qxp 10/24/2007 2:32 PM Page 13
MESSAGE BOARD
W H A T Y O U H A V E T O S A Y
Exams Via Linux in Kerala

I have been a PCQuest reader for the last 10 years. It
is with great interest that I read the Vertical
Focus–Education in your October 2007 issue, particu-
larly the part on ‘Exams via Linux in Kerala’. I have
also implemented a similar solution with a few more
features, using Apache, MySQL, and PHP for a
Maritime academy in Goa. Using its database, the
examiner can immediately get results in various
forms—general marklist, detailed general marklist
where a student’s marks in each topic are shown along
with the answer sheet. This database also maintains details of
each student and allows you to edit them. jdsgoa on PCQforum
browser and go to https://local-

I work with the branch of a big group. Since, we’ve have just host:10000. Here, you should be
started, our LAN setup acts as a work group under the main able to see the webmin console.
group. We have a separate Internet broadband connection. The ISP's By default administration login
router is connected with a switch and then broadcasted to all users. name of webmin is ‘root’ and
We have an application server which runs our main applications, password is your current root
with server 2005 at backend. Now, I want to add a Web module to my password.
application which will communicate with sqldatabase for retriev-
ing and storing data. I have registered for a public IP from my ISP to I am in need of a gateway level
configure my application server. I have purchased a hardware fire- solution for monitoring
wall (hclinfowall ) and want to install it, so that Web server could ac- outgoing information leakage
cess only my sql database. How and where should I install it? detection and email monitoring
Reshjkrush on PCQforums purposes. Is it possible to hold
PCQuest: As you already outgoing emails temporarily and
have a firewall, you just have have them reviewed by an
to give a local IP to both your administrator before delivery?
Web and SQL servers and Please suggest what should I do?
make them talk to each B.N James
other. Give the Public IP to PCQuest: Information leakage pre-
the Firewall and do port for- vention is a growing concern for
warding for port 80 to the local IP of the Web server, as shown in diagram. all enterprises as conventional
UTMs and firewalls don’t solve
this problem. If you are looking for
I tried to start webmin, but PCQ2k7 forum but did not find any a software level solution, then look
could not in PCQ Linux 2007. I be - post on this topic at something like WebSense Con-
lieve it is not included in the Desk - bhide_viju on PCQforums tent Protection Suite. It lets you
top option. So, I downloaded it PCQuest: Login as ‘root’ and run protect data with policy level con-
from webmin and installed it, but ‘/etc/webmin/start’, this will start trols, and monitor data traveling in
still could not start it. I searched webmin manually. Now, open a and out of the enterprise. Another

it in vertical-bank_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:35 PM Page 1
IT has extended the business of banking to

every conceivable channel be it Internet, ATMs,
mobiles and now even trains! Soon you would
be spared the pain of safekeeping multiple PINs
and passwords through Biometrics. All this
comes with its own set of challenges. Read on to
find out about those challenges, and how banks
are finding innovative ways to resolve them
Adeesh Sharma, Vishnu Anand and Jasmine Desai

vertical f c u s | Banking
iven the frenetic pace of life, we’re all hard-
G pressed for time and energy to take care of

our critical tasks. And most of these in-
evitably require transacting money in one form or the
other. A growing economy and the associated perils
of 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 depend
on banks to fulfill daily needs and you’ll know. Cash
withdrawals or deposits, utility bills (electricity, mo-
biles, landlines), corporation taxes, income-tax, ad-
vance tax, transfer of funds across accounts, fixed
deposits, share trading and so on. How do you take
time off your busy professional schedule to visit the
bank and carry these out? Thankfully, it’s the other
way round. The trend among banks and financial
services companies has been to leverage IT to go to
their customers instead of the other way around.
That’s why one can see banks introducing so many
channels for reaching out to their customers, like
phone banking, SMS banking, online banking,
ATMs, credit cards, debit cards and so on.
This sounds really impressive because banks
have to use IT extensively to make it happen. But, it
comes with its own set of challenges, which the CIOs
of banks have to cope up with. One key concern is en-
suring security of all these channels. More channels
means more number of ports opening up. Plus, the
security of transactions through these channels also
has to be ensured. The other key challenge is integra-
tion of various applications and their data. Every bank
today is trying to offer a host of services to customers.
So apart from bank accounts, a bank today also offers
loans, investment options, credit cards, etc. There are
high chances that some of the customers are com-
mon across these applications. However, since these
applications have grown separately, integrating them
together to offer cross sell opportunities is a major
challenge. It’s a real challenge in front of banks to uti-
lize information generated through one application
for servicing the same customer for another applica-
tion. Simply count the number of times you get calls
from the same bank, each time trying to sell some
product/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 caller
to have done his homework properly and not
15 PCQUEST NOVEMBER 2007 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

bother you for basic information such as address, One strong solution to such integration chal-
email, age, etc. lenges can be SOA or Services Oriented Architec-
Sadly, this is seldom the case and more often than ture. It could help banks ensure that their various
not you have to bear unwarranted calls from one bank applications are able to connect with each other with-
or the other. So, clearly banks have a challenge here. out writing any proprietary code, or tampering with
To integrate data across different banking applica- the individual databases. There’s tremendous scope
tions so that agents manning various bank channels for banks to utilize SOA for this job. In fact, it could
know before hand whether a customer they’re calling even be used to integrate their banking applications
is already a customer or not. with the various communication channels.
Another challenge before banks is to tap the vast On the security front, there are several solutions be-
market of rural customers. In fact, this is one area that ing worked out by banks. One of course would be to
remains neglected because of inadequate civic and deploy a complete information security solution that is
telecom infrastructure. May be it is time for banks to able to secure all applications and channels of entry.
go beyond traditional solutions and look at some of As an example of how security across various channels
innovative ones. One such alternative is the use bio- can be enhanced, let’s take a quick peek at how SMS
metric technologies in offering banking services to banking can be used to make and receive payments
far-flung areas. In this story we explore the solutions from third parties such as merchant establishments.
to all these challenges and see what Indian banks A buyer sends a message for buying and the bank
have already done to alleviate those. in turn sends a message confirming the purchase to
both the merchant as well as the buyer. Debit card
Where IT comes to the rescue number is the key field which is used for the authen-
For a start, banks need to have centralized infrastruc- ticity of the customer. Security for transactions tak-
ture not only for their branches but also for the differ- ing place through this channel is ensured in two
ent channels. This would ensure common access to stages. First your mobile number is authenticated by
customer information for users across different chan- the bank through the use of authentication keys.
nels. The same pool of information could be used to Next, a customer enters a secret Mobile Personal
solicit new products and services to old and new cus- Identification Number (MPIN). This needs to be
tomers alike and at the same time provide an efficient again authenticated by the bank. As an enhanced se-
management information system (MIS) to the sales curity measure, access is denied after three invalid
teams to generate leads from. login attempts.
ATMs:A quick rewind

HSBC introduced the first ATM in India in 1987. routed among member institutions through a network
ICICI, UTI, HDFC and IDBI together count for more switch. This switch transmits the information to the
than 50% of the total ATMs in India. But SBI pips bank which has issued the card, which in turn
them all in reaching out to the remotest of customers, approves or declines the transaction request and noti-
with ATM machines in the smallest of towns and fies the switch. The decision of the card-issuing bank
cities. After SBI, The Corporation Bank has the second is then routed by the switch to the processor of the
largest network of ATMs amongst nationalized banks. ATM, which completes the transaction. The account
Most of the banks are entering into tie-ups with other balances of member banks are sent at the end of the
banks to fast-forward their ATM deployment. For a day. It takes approximately Rs 10 lakhs to set up an
nominal fee, which depends on the scheme that a ATM center. Rs 12-14 lakhs per annum are needed for
bank offers and the facilities you choose, customers its maintenance. To keep the cost in equilibrium posi-
can enjoy the same benefits as they do from their tion, there should be around 250-300 transactions per
bank’s own ATM. All information and transactions are day per ATM.

A case for biometric authentication nique for establishing identity through unique phys-
The banking sector has been very lousy in adopting iological or behavioral characteristics.
biometrics for the mass consumer, as people used to Finger scanning is still the most popular application
perceive sharing details of their anatomies as analo- of biometrics in automated teller machines. By plug-
gous to criminal investigation. But with a lot of ging a portable scanning device into the back of the
thought being given to innovation throughout the ATM, any ATM machine can be enhanced to offer this
BFS, the technology is finding many takers now. functionality. This machine in turn connects to the
However, in rural areas, with literacy rates still below bank's server, which authenticates the visitor by com-
acceptable levels, people have been pragmatic to- paring with stored records. It’s an unequivocal way of
ward this technology. We believe anything that establishing the identity of the person and one that can’t
makes for a simpler interface and saves you from the be breached by intruders. And not just ATMs, biomet-
hassles of maintaining mu`ltiple passwords or PINs rics can also be used to restrict access to sensitive areas
is a welcome step. It is after all an automated tech- in banks such as locker rooms and data centers.
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
“ We regularly do ‘Penetration Tests,’
wherein people from outside are allowed
”
have to face demands from suppliers and secondly, the staff to test the vulnerability of our system
needs to get adjusted to the latest technology. A vendor can
The signature of the customer is made available to the cashier
only provide you with a solution, give you the connectivity
through technology. Customers can also open new accounts
and links, but it is upto you to utilize it for business develop-
with us through Internet and come to the bank just once to
ment. The growth rate in banking is extremely high and IT
sign documents.
industry at times fails to deliver. For eg, nowadays we talk of
opening 50 branches in a single day. For that, we need hard- How do you alleviate security concerns at your as well as
ware and connectivity. IT industry due to physical and capaci- customer’s end?
ty constraints fails to provide connectivity in certain places. We have a very elaborate system for security. However, one
When a rural branch is included in Core Banking System cannot remain static on security. It always needs to be
(CBS) and if any of the connectivity links goes down, it upgraded. We regularly do “Penetration Test” wherein some
becomes a serious issue. people from outside with our permission are allowed to test
the vulnerability of our system. In the datacenters, everyday a
What steps have you taken to ensure faster services to
report is generated and reviewed to check whether there was
customers?
an attempt to hack the system. To ensure identity of a cus-
Our processes have been re-engi-
tomer, the most common way is an ID and a password. We are
neered so that services get priority
also adopting biometrics wherein through a thumb impres-
rather than the background
sion or colour of the eye the authenticity of the person is rec-
processes. For eg, we have adopt-
ognized. This would be especially useful in rural areas.
ed an application called Universal
Tailor which will dispose How do you plan to expand your reach in rural areas?
cash payment from We are very keen on expanding in rural areas as more than 40
the storage disk per cent of our business comes from there. Unfortunately, IT
itself, shortening has failed in providing connectivity in many remote areas.
the time of There are business considerations involved while building
the original infrastructure in these remote areas. All branches have to be
process. brought on a common platform with similar technology. To
resolve connectivity issues we tied up with a radio link
K Asawa
provider to provide us connectivity through radio links.
DGM, IT - Bank of Baroda

What makes a biometric trait stand apart is that it matching hand geometry to retina scans to iris scans
is as unique as the individual from whom it was cre- and so on. Authentication can also be done based on
ated. So unlike a password or PIN, a biometric trait quasi-behavioral attributes such as a person’s voice,
cannot be lost, stolen, or recreated. This makes the handwriting, etc. Yet another is facial recognition,
use of biometrics a sure enough remedy to prevent where a person's face is stored digitally and for each
identity theft, a problem that is mushrooming along- transaction, the live image of the person is compared
side databases of personal information. In fact, some to the one stored in the database and co-related to his
of the channels for monetary transactions such as account number. Hand geometry based systems are
credit cards are a very good candidate for application not easy to implement though as their parameters
of biometrics on the consumer side. More so, as they change with external factors such as weather condi-
get smarter and develop capabilities to store more tions, cleanliness of hands, etc. Likewise, retina scans
and more personal details on an RFID chip. Apart need perfect alignment of the eye to reach the retina
from the account information and other personal de- at the back of the eye; a time consuming activity in
tails, information pertaining to the biometric traits of populated areas. Iris scans are marginally better as
an individual can also be bolted inside. Technology they do not require contact between the customer’s
experts aver that a digital fingerprint will eventually eye and the biometric device to correlate the eye's
prove cheaper to incorporate for banks than any of colored area (ie, the iris). Voice recognition at pres-
the keyboard-based encrypted solutions as the ent seems the easiest of all biometric techniques as
biggest issue with PIN based access remains its vul- voice can even be authenticated sitting at home
nerability to hackers after it has been keyed in by the through your phone. A survey conducted backs this
user and before it gets to the card reader. claims saying that 95% of consumers prefer voice ver-
ification compared with the 80% that are willing to ac-
Beyond finger scans cept fingerprint scans. As mentioned earlier, voice
Finger-based scans are just one of the multitude of even works remotely (by phone) whereas con-
options that biometrics based authentication tech- sumer’s need to install special fingerprint readers
nologies offer. There are other options such as at their premises to be able to get themselves au-
Biometric banking@Canara Bank

L ast month, a village near Bangalore called Devanahalli,
was chosen by Canara Bank to feature the first-ever
biometric ATM in the country. Besides performing the
in the local language, and to overcome resistance to tech-
nology, voice, and not text is used as the primary mode of
communication.As part of its next pilot program, Canara
functions of a regular ATM, it captures the fingerprints of Bank plans to equip villagers of Leisure and Kuluvanahalli
customers that would be transferred to the central server pockets of Karnataka with smartcards and soon spread its
through a CDMA phone. Thus a customer is authenticated reach across the country. The bank also uses fingerprint
through his fingerprints instead of the four-digit pin. Since scanning to safeguard account details that are stored in an
the initiative is targeted at rural users, a pre-recorded voice RFID chip. It has gone a step further and introducing what
system in the appropriate regional language is included to it calls the ‘Mobile ATM’. This is essentially a van that
guide the customer. In the first stage of its financial inclu- houses a toned down version of the ATM, powered by high
sion project, Canara Bank has opened 6 lakh ‘no-frills’ capacity batteries. The van would travel around villages,
accounts spread across 1639 villages all over the country, and be stationed at particular spots on definite days of the
and hopes to increase this figure to 10 lakh by the end of month.Villagers who have no-frills account can enter the
this fiscal. These no-frills accounts go back to the very van, scan their fingerprints and perform transactions.As
basics of banking and allow deposits, withdrawals and soon as the transaction is complete, the details would be
account balance enquiries. The key here is the fact that recorded in a mobile phone and at the end of every ‘ses-
human interaction with equipment or technology is done sion’, the details would be uploaded to the central server.

thenticated online. But before this all is well accepted A combination of two technologies – RFID and
and practiced, technical standards need to be estab- Near Field Communication (NFC) – is all set to en-
lished so that biometrics work universally. Work is able the rural population of the country to perform
in progress with a lot of ATM vendors pitching in with essential banking transactions. NXP Semiconduc-
their devices, and we expect some action sooner than tors, founded by Philips, that co-invented the NFC
later in this space. technology has partnered with A Little World, inven-
tors of a mobile platform for inclusive banking, have
Micro-banking in rural areas tried the concept of micro-banking in over 450 vil-
We have seen how biometric authentication can pro- lages across four states of the country. The technol-
vide a secure and remotely accessible channel for ogy involves setting up of Customer Service Points
bank customers and how it can come in handy for equipped with state-of-the-art mobile phones that
banks while servicing rural populace. Let’s now look support NFC. Each villager who is an account
at some other initiatives taken by banks for the rural holder, will be given a biometric-enabled RFID
sector. Rural banking is one area where political pres- smartcard, which will communicate with the mobile
sures play their part. One significant challenge for phone at the Customer Service Point. The smartcard
banks while providing services to rural customers is essentially contains information about identity of the
the change in government policies for agriculturists customer such as name, address, photograph, fin-
and the related thrust on farm credit. However, tech- gerprint templates and relevant details of the savings
nologically their efforts depend on the availability of or loan accounts held by the issuing bank. NFC, be-
telecom infrastructure. The silver lining here is the ing a short-range wireless connectivity technology
continued downward spiral in the prices of telecom enables secure exchange of data between two de-
products over the past few years. This trend is likely vices, by just placing them together, pretty much
to continue and is in alignment with the increasing like how Bluetooth functions. Since NFC effectively
demand for networking backbone. This is great news combines contactless identification and networking
for all customers, more so banks who are always technologies, it can communicate between an RFID
large consumers of bandwidth. The reduced band- card and an NFC mobile phone, or if required, be-
width costs mean that banks can get their far-flung tween two NFC devices. Currently, the NFC-enabled
branches networked at far lower costs than was the mobile phones used in this project are sourced from
case earlier. This would also create redundancy and Motorola and Nokia.
in turn greater resilience for their networks. The NFC works on the concept of magnetic field
induction, and operates within the
unlicensed radio frequency band of
13.56MHz. Speeds can vary between
106 Kbit/s, 212 Kbit/s and 424
Kbit/s. It is an open platform tech-
nology standardized in ECMA-340
and operates with both the ‘active’
and ‘passive’ modes of RFID. During
its pilot run, Uttarakhand, Mizoram,
Meghalaya and Andhra Pradesh
have been covered, and banks like
State bank of India, Union Bank, Axis
Bank, Andhra bank and the Andhra
Pradesh Grameen Bank have collab-
orated with the project. In the
A biometric-enabled RFID smartcard containing fingerprint scans communicates Warangal district of AP, social se-
with the mobile phone at the bank using ‘Near Field Communication’ curity pensioners were given their

payments using Micro-banking, and in places like paperwork and making the passport data tamper-
Aizwal in Mizoram and Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand, proof. For the NFC initiative however, it is designed
the project introduced the concept of banking, since to eliminate the cost and effort to set up physical
these areas have never had a bank before. Interest- branches in rural areas, and providing services rang-
ingly, the RFID cards used for the initiative were tai- ing from cash deposits, cash withdrawals, utility pay-
lored around a completely different application. ments, and money transfers.
These cards are currently used in about 35 countries
including Singapore, the US, and the UK, on their Passengers, Goods and... ATMs on Trains
newly issued e-passports. The RFID chips are em- You’ve seen mobile ATM vans across cities and ru-
bedded in the passports, and are aimed at reducing ral areas. But how about ATMs on railways---the ul-
Increasing IT Orientation of the Indian Banking Industry

Parishesh Mishra and Arpan Gupta, Industry Verticals Research Practice, IDC India
W ith the entry of large foreign banks in the Indian

banking arena in 2009, Indian banks with their
relatively small sizes will be forced to consolidate to take
action services, to attract and retain customers. The key
IT solutions being targeted by the Indian banking indus-
try are networking, customer relationship management,
the increased competition head-on. Indian banking business intelligence, Internet banking and storage and
industry today faces unprecedented challenges (customer security solutions. By leveraging IT the banks are looking
acquisition and retention, reducing costs of transactions, to develop alternative delivery channels such as ATMs,
risk management, and regulatory compliance) to sustain tele-banking, and Mobile banking. Thus IT is playing a
their growth path. To leverage the opportunities present very crucial role in bringing the banking sector to its real
(and created) and the challenges tickling the industry, worth and is focusing more on customer convenience
the sector is increasingly getting exposed to information and development of banking habits among all. Also the
technology. Effective use of technology has dramatically banking system will become transparent in its dealings
improved the efficiency of sector's operations, which has and will adopt global best practices in accounting and
led to increased productivity and profitability. disclosures driven by the motto of value enhancement for
According to the IDC report titled India BFSI Sector all the stakeholders involved. Technology would make the
IT Usage and Trends 2007-2011 Forecast and Analysis, flow of information much faster, more accurate and
the IT market in the Indian banking sector is forecasted enable quicker analysis of data received. Therefore the
to grow at CAGR of 13.0% for the period of 2006-2011. conventional definition of banking will make way for the
The key IT segments in the Indian banking industry more tech-enabled banking; all because of increased IT
would be the Packaged Software, PCs, Mid-range Servers orientation of the Indian banking industry.
and Networking Equipment. The IT deployments
in the banks will not only act as a facilitator for BASEL II Compliance,
Innovation, Product
further expansion but will also help the banks in Bundling, Anti-Money
Scaling up of IT Infrastructure
Laundering
dealing with the issues of storage, security, under- Data
Warehousing and
CRM, RTGS
standing customer informatics and regulatory and Core Consolidation
and BPM
Banking
compliances. Banks are increasingly becoming Branch Networking,
technology-intensive and are looking to leverage Total Bank Automation
and ATMs
IT to meet the exponentially increasing consumer
Branch
demands in terms of cost, efficiency, convenience Automation
and reliability. The banks in India are looking to Punch Card

Equipments
provide Web-based trade support, real-time gross
settlement, online tax accounting system, value-
added transaction services and basic online trans- 1960s 1980s 1990s 2004s 2008s 2011s

timate mobility solution. Close on the heels of setting cities and towns, where the infrastructure to estab-
up of ATMs on railway platforms, the government lish ATMs or other such mobile banking solutions is
has given permission to banks to set up ATMs on either simply non-existent or proves pretty expen-
trains! And why not, with the progress in telecommu- sive. Plus, there are security concerns. In fact, a long-
nications such as improved VSAT and microwave distance train could act as the fastest and longest
links, technology has become a key enabler for set- mobile carrier of ATMs across this vast country. This
ting this infrastructure. Right now, there are more would also ensure safety of passengers as they need
than 1800 ATMs on railway platforms across India. not carry large sums of cash during journey. Instead
Most of these are placed in the bigger and more pop- they can withdraw money as and when required.
ular stations in metros, which is logical as these sta- This facility can further be enhanced by installing e-
tions see enormous number of passengers ticketing kiosks alongside the ATMs. This means a
commuting on a daily basis. Having ATMs on trains passenger can withdraw money and buy rail tickets
would help passengers coming from the smaller at the same place!
Being the largest bank in the country what challenges you will not be able to crack the code. Even for other transactions
face and how can IT help overcome those? bank has come up with documented security policy, which is
There are two immediate challenges—the bank’s size and its followed meticulously. There are regular audits carried out to
geographical reach. IT is helping us in handling banking vol- check the security of the system.We have ISO certificates for
umes, amount of transactions and accounts. There are 100 our datacenters. In the datacenters, nobody has access to data.
million accounts in the system and over 20 million transac- On our website password is not asked. So we issue a warning
tions in a day. In three years time, we plan to grow about five that if someone I asking the password do not mention.We are
times this volume and without IT infrastructure it is not possi- looking at biometrics in ATM.
ble. There has to be similar IT infrastructure across all branch-
How does SBI use technology to serve rural customers?
es. However, IT infrastructure deficiency is the main challenge.
We have 6600 rural branches.We have put most of them on
core banking. The last phase of connectivity should be com-
“
In rural areas we plan to move to
pleted by March.We use VSAT in such remote areas. The ques-
banking through mobile sets,
tion is not of connectivity alone. I have to service
as mobile penetration is good
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
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
transactions take place through these channels. Currently we mobile sets, as mobile pene-
have 11,000 branches and 7,000 ATMs. To enable a smooth tration is good in these areas.
communication amongst various branches we have set up our We are also looking at kiosk
own network using various technologies such as CDMA,VSAT banking or setting up a PC
and radio frequency. wherein a person can look after it
and operate it.We have mobile
How do you ensure security from your as well as cus-
ATMs, which go from place
tomer’s end?
to place.We also have
There are two levels of security. One is manual security for
mobile VSATs.
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
S K Sehgal
deployed.When a message is moved from the branch to the
GM, IT - State Bank of India
datacenter, it is encrypted. Even if someone intercepts it, he

technology-wireless.qxp 10/24/2007 5:11 PM Page 30
Technology
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 by
these.What’s more they’re even protecting wild life. Let’s explore the enchanting world of wireless
Anindya Roy, Jasmine Desai, with inputs from Shashwat Chaturvedi
I
t’s long since we’ve been talking article we’ll see how wireless devices of wireless but a very important applica-
about wireless technologies through influence our official, personal and so- tion nonetheless. The most prominent
our articles and with the passage of cial Lives, and the technologies behind technology that we have see in this arena
time we’ve seen how these technologies all this. is VoWLAN.The technology is not rocket
have evolved. Today, these technologies science or something that has just come
have matured to such an extent that VoWLAN in enterprises out of research labs but is essentially two
they’ve ceased to remain just a product For today’s enterprises, the biggest chal- technologies coupled with each other.
or a technology but are influencing lenge is to contact the right person at the ‘Vo’ stands for Voice and WLAN for WiFi.
our lives in a big way. Our future no right time through the right medium. This means voice over standard WiFi
doubt lies in a wireless world and in this This is of course is not the core objective links.

Technology-wireless.qxp 10/24/2007 5:05 PM Page 32
Technology
users to incorporate RFID into various Directorate indicates that out of 173
applications and workflows. Microsoft deaths of tigers during 1999-2004, 83
has used a new software layer approach were caused by poaching. You’ll be sur-
that allows all kind of RFID devices, be it prised to know that poachers use sophis-
a current RFID device, a previous gener- ticated communication devices such as
ation device or next-generation sensors wireless sets, UHB Radio, and even Ham
and Electronic Product Code (EPC) read- radio for tracking tigers. Tiger reserves
ers to be incorporated, in a plug and play on the contrary are not equipped with
manner.From a developer’s point of view, adequate means of communication to
such a unique event processing engine counter illegal activities. Radio teleme-
helps in creating, deploying and manag- try can be used to track a lion or a tiger.
ing end to end logical RFID processes Here, a tiger is tranquilized and a collar
that are independent of device type and containing a radio antenna is put across
device communication protocols. The his neck. A researcher armed with a re-
best part of BizTalk RFID is that it can be ceiver can easily track a tiger with the aid
integrated with the current line of busi- of radio telemetry.
ness applications such as Enterprise Re- Geographical Information Systems
Fring is a simple, freely available tool
source Planning (ERP) systems, Ware- (GIS) is another tool to track the move-
that lets you call any GSM, VoWLAN or
house Management Systems (WMS), etc. ment of various animals and birds such
Messenger with your Windows Mobile
The best part is that for such an integra- as Siberian cranes.The radio collars have
hope that with stronger security mecha- tion no major modifications are re- a small GPS attachment that can be pro-
nisms in place, we’ll see more deploy- quired; it works automatically. You can grammed to switch on at specific times
ments based on WiMAX in future. read more details on MS BizTalk RFID on in during a day. These GPS devices then
pg 136 in our Extraedge section. search for the nearest satellites and once
RFID in enterprises a connection has been established, you
We’re no strangers to this technology that Social Impact of Radio can easily fix the location of the animal.
already has made such a huge impact. Its Telemetry and GIS The unit switches off by itself and trans-
applications are enormous for enter- The battle between poachers and tigers mits data to handheld devices which can
prises.And has been further accentuated has continued since ages. Technology be transferred on to a GIS.In India,WWF
by its adoption and development by gi- can help save the tiger in a big way, start- is using GPS to track elephants in Assam
ants such as Microsoft.Recently the coming right from investigation to prosecu- by following elephant herds, or using
pany launched Biztalk RFID that allows tion. Data available at the Project Tiger secondary indicators of elephant move-
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

technology-wireless.qxp 10/24/2007 5:19 PM Page 36
Technology
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
Source: iptp.com
scenarios, as well.
Personal applications
of Bluetooth Using a mobile phone you can control all electric equipment such as ACs, geysers,
Yes it’s old. But that reaffirms the old
TVs, etc wirelessly using Bluetooth
adage, which says ‘the old is gold’. With
the advent of Bluetooth, we first heard in the car stereos. We are seeing software Coming back to the waiting area,once a
the concept of a PAN (Personal Area Net- and infrastructures that can integrate all visitor enters the waiting area of your office
work). Now, the network has become your digital lifestyle systems over the you can greet him, simply by setting some
more sophisticated and we call it a HAN Bluetooth to update your proximity and messages,as soon as your Bluetooth system
(Home Area Network). The applications presence in an intelligent system environ- detects his arrival.Or for that matter as your
based on Bluetooth standards are grad- ment. Bluetooth being a small distance friend enters your car,the car starts playing
ually coming in the market, further communication channel gives the flexibil- music of her choice. Start her favorite TV
boosting such networking concepts. ity to devices kept in a room to sense that channel,etc.Not only this,when a phone call
Now we have a car stereo system which someone is entering the room and the per- comes to any mobile in the car,the celebra-
comes integrated with Bluetooth, so that son can also be identified.All this can hap- tion goes to mute. Once the call is over, the
you one can directly stream your music pen by the Bluetooth connection of the device again tunes back to normal.
files stored in phones to the car stereo person’s phone. So, if you want to hide No,this is not the future or science fic-
system. Not only that, the car stereo gets yourself from your manager,you just have tion. This is possible today and that too at
mute when a call comes to the phone. to keep your mobile’s Bluetooth connec- an affordable price. You can try out the
But trust me this is not going to end up tivity off! 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-
A car stereo integrated with Bluetooth. You can directly stream music files from any ucts in the market, and their tribe is
Bluetooth mobile device and enjoy your favorite music while driving growing fast.

technology-office format wars_final.qxp 10/23/2007 12:43 PM Page 38
Trends
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 acceptance
from ISO in the office suite space
Vishnu Anand
E
ven as the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD bat- laboration with AOL and Yahoo! for in-
tle is heading to its logical conclu- stant messaging, and Novell for virtual-
DIRECT HIT!
sion (of co-existence or the lack of ization applications, besides the creation Applies To: Office applications’
users
it), another format war has reached its of what it calls the Interoperability Vendor
Alliance. But its biggest achievement in
USP: Comparing the market
crescendo – the war of office suite for-
stakes for the two global office
mats. Microsoft recently approached the this regard is said to be the successful de- suite formats
International Standards Organization ployment of what it calls the Open XML Primary Link: www.iso.org
(ISO) for a fast-track decision on the Translator, essentially a combination of Google Keywords: ODF,
adoption of its format, which is used by tools that allow translation between ODF OOXML
Office 2007, as a certified global format. based applications and OOXML formats,
ISO, which has already ratified the Open the source code for which is available un-
Document Format (ODF) as a standard, der what is called a BSD license. Having Growth of ODF
announced on September 5th that Mi- got its roots from Berkeley Software Dis- ODF is the brainchild of Sun Microsys-
crosoft’s format, the Open Office XML tribution,BSD represents a family of free- tem’s OpenOffice, formerly known as Star
(OOXML) failed to get a ‘resounding yes’ for-use software licenses worldwide. Office,started off in 1999 by Star Division,
from its panel consisting of technology as an attempt to build a non-proprietary
companies and all the UN member Divided supporters XML-based interoperable office suite. A
nations. While HP, Intel, EMC, Sony Electronics, year later,Sun Microsystems acquired Star
Apple and Lexmark International have Division and for the next two years, all it
Wait and watch come out strongly in support of Microsoft, did was to invite source codes through an
The final ratification of OOXML as a stan- Oracle and IBM continue to support ODF. open-to-all licensing mechanism. An
dard by the ISO will now have to wait till Germany and the US voted in favor of Mi- XML community project was also em-
February next year,when the ISO will hold crosoft, while Britain and France voiced a barked upon,and the two finally united in
a ballot resolution meeting and Microsoft clear ‘no’ but were open to supporting Mi- December 2002, at an OASIS (Organiza-
will be asked to address and counter the crosoft in future if‘vital modifications’are tion for Advancement of Structured Infor-
concerns, apprehensions and brickbats incorporated in the OOXML structure.In- mation Standards) conference, where the
put forward by various participating dia preferred to follow this argument, arrival of ODF was formally upheld.
countries. In other words, Microsoft has though initially it went all out against Mi-
about six months to beef up the OOXML crosoft.As expected,the technical institu- Vendor support
format to suit international standards and tions,IITs and IIMs are completely in sup- But it was only in May 2006, after regular
gather more support. port of ODF, and believe that the OOXML overhauling, public consultations and two
Microsoft has already started its en- is not ‘open’ enough to be certified as a enhanced draft versions of the format were
deavor to mend the biggest flaw of global standard, as it doesn’t represent a released,that the ODF achieved ISO certifi-
OOXML– interoperability. It has under- common ground across products. They cation.The next obvious step was to consol-
taken to beef up its partnership with ven- argue that ODF has originated through a idate this fete by attracting other software
dors to tackle interoperability issues in process of evolution and right since its in- creators into adopting the ODF. One of the
design, technology and standardization. ception, it has been completely ‘vendor first to oblige was Adobe, which up-
It has also announced a continuing col- neutral’. graded its PDF format to sync up with

technology-office format wars_final.qxp 10/23/2007 12:44 PM Page 40
Trends
ODF. In July 2006, Google joined the ODF that was introduced as part of Office 2003 ‘Open Source suites;’ which in turn trans-
bandwagon by allowing compatibility of its suite.Back then,data was not compressed lates as a format that encourages compe-
online Office suite, Google Apps (which in- and was stored in a single XML file, with tition and development of new products,
cludes individual applications like Google binary data, like images, being repre- each similar to the other. Contrary to this,
Docs and Google Spreadsheets) with ODF. sented as BASE64 strings. This is a posi- OOXML ensures that nobody can clone
Besides Google and Adobe, the ODF loyal- tional notation process that uses the the Microsoft model of Office, while pay-
ists’ club includes founder members IBM, alphabets A-Z and numerals 0-9 for first ing more emphasis on detail and smooth
Oracle, Red Hat and Novell. 64 digits of the code, while the last two operation.
The simple idea of designing a skeleton digits are various combinations of num-
for software developers to build their appli- bers and digits with specific tags. User interest
cations on,specifically office and word pro- But during the development of Office By the time the ISO panel meets in Febru-
cessing applications,and requiring them to 12 (more popularly known as Office 2007), ary, Microsoft should make the OOXML
only tweak the backend system to suit their Microsoft resorted to following an ODF ‘open’enough for use by any third party de-
needs did the trick for ODF. To simplify model by storing data in a number of small veloper, who in all probability, will belong
things further, the ODF architecture has packet files, each of which are embedded to the open source community. The devel-
sub-divided the systems into convenient within a .zip file.Having got this format cer- oper should be able to use,modify,interop-
and flexible components – Scalable Vector tified by the European Computer Manufac- erate and sync up existing and newer appli-
Graphics (SVG), Mathematical Formulas turers Association (ECMA), Microsoft ap- cations on the OOXML platform. This will
(MathML), Embedded links (XLink), Syn- proached ISO for certification. ensure two things – a certain similarity of
chronized Multimedia Integration Lan- the OOXML to ODF in terms of flexibility
guage (SMIL) and Forms definitions Head to head and interoperability and two, a major
(XForms), each of which is built on Open At the very basic level of document read- chunk of Microsoft’s proprietary Office
Source platform. While SVG is an XML ability, both ODF and OOXML work in the backbone thrown open for external devel-
specification that allows scripting for static
same way,and no visible difference can be opers to modify and create new applica-
and animated graphics,MathML integrates observed in terms of ‘openness’. But the tions. From the users’ perspective, this
mathematical formulae into WWW docu- shortcoming clearly lies in two depart- would mean an automatic sync up between
ments, and XLink allows the inclusion of ments – backward compatibility and gen- multiple office suite applications,irrespec-
hyperlinks within XML documents. eralization across platforms. In that re- tive of which vendor they have purchased it
Xforms, originally designed for XHTML, spect, ODF and OOXML were created for from.When two or more office suites begin
incorporates the Web Forms functions into two distinctly different purposes. While ‘talking’to each other,it will create room for
the application while SMIL is the language Microsoft intended the OOXML to be in better usability, synchronization and the
for describing multimedia presentations sync with the feature set of Office 2007, ability to invoke specific applications from
within an XML based framework. and make it backward compatible with other suites, if needed.For instance, a doc-
earlier editions of the suite, ODF began as ument or spreadsheet you have created us-
Beefing up OOXML a general document markup format, cre- ing one vendor’s application,can be opened
OOXML on the other hand is a beefed up ated for and by Linux enthusiasts.As Open and modified in another’s – because they
version of Microsoft’s XML based format Source grew out of Linux boom, so did would have been created around the same
ODF. Hence, it can be universal format. For a developer, this
compared to what means a massive broadening of arenas for
How they Compare
HTML did to Web collaborations, XML-based programs that
ODF OOXML pages.As of now,ODF blend across different products and appli-
Created in 1999 2003 has come to be cations,and a common skeleton that can be
Created by StarOffice Microsoft known as a format done up the way your unique application
USP Interoperability, Massive user base, that is conducive to demands. If all goes well, this fete will be
support from Open keen interest from
creating new office achieved by the end of February,after ISO’s
Source community Microsoft supporters
and vendors suite applications final meeting to settle the ODF versus
that wish to be called OOXML battle.

enterprise implementation_Remote App Streaming with Windows Server 2008_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:39 PM Page 68
Enterprise Implementation
Remote App Streaming

SERIES
LH The upcoming Windows 2008 Server has built Application Streaming into its Terminal Services.
PART II This allows you to stream a single application to as many users as you want over the network
Anindya Roy
long-awaited first public beta of Mi-
I
n the September ’07 issue we prom-
ised to do a series on the upcoming crosoft’s Hypervisor is also out.
DIRECT HIT!
Windows Server 2008, code named So in a separate article, we’re going Applies To: CIOs
Longhorn, and take you through a new to tell you all about the new Hypervisor.
feature every month after we’ve actually
USP: Learn how to use App
Streaming with Win Server 2008
worked on it. That time has finally come, Remote App Streaming
and this month, we’re starting with ‘not’ Application Streaming, is not new, but Primary Link: http://www.short-
one, but two exciting new features in it’s not too old either. Citrix Presenta- enurl.com/6ufja
Windows Server 2008. tion Server provides the same on Win-
Google Keywords: App Streaming
The feature we’re going to cover in dows Platform. But that is a third party
this article is remote application software, which you need to purchase
streaming. However, before we get into separately. and use it, let’s first understand what is
this feature, there’s some good news: Windows Server 2008 has the ap- Remote App Streaming.
MS has released Windows Server 2008 plication streaming feature built in. Be- Streaming refers to accessing data
RC0 this month. With this release, the fore we go further and see how to install 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.
From this Window you can select as many installed apps as you want to stream over Another good thing about such a
Terminal Services method of app delivery is that it uses re-

enterprise implementation_Remote App Streaming with Windows Server 2008_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:40 PM Page 69
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-Requisites
There 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 On the window, first click on the application listed at the bottom and then click on the
app. We used a standard 100 Mbps net- .rdp file to create a rdp shortcut for connecting the application
work for this. The version of Windows
Server 2008 used was the latest RC0 re- will be asked to select a ‘Role Service’ for stalled apps on the server. Select all the
lease. It is available for download from Mi- the terminal service role. Select on ‘Termi- apps you want to stream and click Next.
crosoft’s website. nal Services.’ Now again continue with the Two more clicks and the wizard finishes.
The client can be any machine run- wizard till you are asked to specify an au- Now, at the bottom of the ‘RemoteApp
ning on Windows XP, 2000, 2003, Vista, thentication method for your Terminal Manager’ console a new table appears.
or Longhorn Server. But the only prereq- Services. If it is for a test setup (which most Here you will see all the apps selected for
uisite is that it should have Remote Desk- likely will be the case) select the second op- streaming. Click on them one by one. A
top Client version 6.0 installed. Longhorn tion which says ‘Do not require Network new list appears at the right end of con-
and Vista come preloaded with RDC 6.0 Level Authentication.’ Now continue sole. Here you will notice two links ‘Creat
but for WinXP, Win2000, and Win 2003, pressing Next till you get a summary page .rdp file’ and ‘Create Windows Installer
you have to download and install it from which asks you to confer and start the in- Package.’ Clicking on any of these starts
http://support.microsoft. stallation. Click on the Install button and the wizard. Depending on the link you
com/kb/925876. let it finish. With this believe it or not your have clicked, at the end of the wizard an
App Streaming Server setup is done. .msi or an .rdp file get generated. Now you
Installation can copy these files to any client machine.
This is pretty straightforward. All you Streaming an Application Here the .rdp file is a direct shortcut to con-
need to do is add the Terminal Server Role As your Streaming server is installed, now nect to the Streamed app whereas .msi file
to your Windows Server 2008 and install share an app for streaming. We tried it out is an installer which installs the .rdp file to
the Remote App functionality. To do so, first with two apps. One was the good old Word- the program files of the client machine.
open the Server Manager Console from Ad- Pad and the other Adobe Photoshop 7, The benefit of the .msi file is that you can
ministrative Tools and click on the Roles both worked flawlessly. do a remote deployment of the .rdp file to
option at the left pane of the window. Now Adding a new app for streaming is also all the machines at a go.
from the main window click on the ‘Add a very simple process. All you have to do is Once done, click on .rdp file. It first
Roles’ link. It will open up a wizard. Click first install the app (which you want to asks for authentication and then con-
on ‘Next’ once and it will show you all the stream) on the server. Then go to Adminis- nects and opens the streamed app from
possible 17/18 Roles available with Win- trative Tools>Terminal Services and start any machine on the network running
dows Server 2008. Check the ‘Terminal the ‘TS RemoteApp Manager’ console. on any Windows OS and terminal server
Services’ role and continue the wizard. Click on the ‘Add RemoteApp Program’ client 6.0. When the app starts, it’s very
After clicking a few more ‘Next’ but- link. A wizard opens up, click on Next on difficult to explore if it’s running locally
tons you will land to a screen where you the first page and it will list down all the in- or from any remote machine.

enterprise implementation_Windows Hypervisor_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:20 PM Page 68
Virtualization in Windows Server 2008

SERIES The first public beta of Microsoft’s Hypervisor has been released for its upcoming server OS.We
LH
PART III checked out how well it works and the pre-requisites for setting it up
Anindya Roy
F
inally, the long-awaited Windows which means a setup where the virtual-
hypervisor has been released with ization layer essentially runs on top of
DIRECT HIT!
the Windows Server 2008 RC0, the hardware and below the Operating Applies To: Sys admins, CIOs
which was earlier code named Long- System. You will know the difference by
USP: Understand how to use MS
horn. The Hypervisor is still in its in- comparing it with any traditional virtu- WSV
fancy, but that does not reflect upon the alization system, where the virtualiza- Primary Link:
installation process, which is as simple tion layer runs on top of the host. The http://www.microsoft.com
as adding a new Role to any Windows hypervisor runs directly on top of the Google Keywords: Hypervisor,
Server. hardware, and uses the virtualization Longhorn, WSV
Once it is installed, you will love its features of the underlying CPU, eg. In-
usability and performance. Before we go tel’s VT and AMD’s Pacifica.
ahead, let’s first understand in a nut- As the virtualization layer sits techniques.
shell what exactly is a hypervisor. directly on top of the hardware, it is very The other well known hypervisor is
thin and lightweight. It is also more re- XEN from Citrix.
Understanding hypervisors source conscious. Both of these features
A hypervisor is a technique to run virtu- make its performance much better as Prerequisites
alization in full-virtualization mode, compared to traditional virtualization To 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.
Installation
For installation of the Microsoft Hyper-
visor or the Windows Server Virtualiza-
tion role, you have to do some tweaking
Top two: Windows XP and 2003 running as virtual machines on Windows Server Vir- before you can install it through the
tualization. Bottom: Virtualization Management console to configure the VMs Server Management console. This is

enterprise implementation_Windows Hypervisor_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:20 PM Page 69
new role called Click on the Virtual machine option
Windows Server and a new wizard will pop up.
Virtualization. Follow the wizard as shown in the images
Now, go to Ad- and it will create a virtual machine for
ministrative tools you.
and start Server Once you have created virtual ma-
Management con- chines, it’s just a matter of turning them
sole. Click on the on and using them from the Windows
Roles option from Virtualization Manager interface.
the left of the win-
dow. Interesting findings
Now, if you One great thing about WSV is that it is
can see Add role in backward compatible with .vhd files cre-
the main window ated by VPC or MS Virtual Server. And
Windows Hypervisor let’s you create virtual machines through

a simple wizard. It first asks you to give your VM a name
because WSV is not present in the Add pane, then click on it. A
Role wizard of Server Management con- wizard will open. Select
sole, by default. To get this role enabled, the penultimate option,
you have to first install two updates. No, which says Windows
you don’t have to download anything. Server Virtualization
These updates ship along with the Win- and follow the wizard
dows Server 2008 RC0 but have to be in- till that gets installed.
stalled separately.
To do so, first go to <system volume> Using the
\Windows\WSV. Here,File
you name: two Hypervisor
will seeclient.conf
You can define a new virtual HDD for your virtual machine,
MSU files. Install both of them, one by To start working with
or boot from an existing one made from MS VPS or VS
one. Once the installation is done, go the Windows Server Vir-
back to the Server Management con- tualization, go to the Administrative it’s just a matter of creating new virtual
sole’s Add role wizard and you will see a tools again and click on the Windows Vir- machines with pre-existing hard-disk
tualization Manager. A win- images, to use those old VHD’s with WSV.
dow will open. One problem we faced during this was
From this window you that the graphical interface of Linux is
can create, manage, modify not very compatible with WSV, till now.
and delete any guest OS on We tried installing Fedora 7, Gentoo and
the server. Mandriva on top of WSV, but none of
To create a new guest OS them were able to start the graphical in-
you just have to click on terface while installing. But, as this is the
Newon the right hand side first public Beta release of WSV, it might
pane of the main window. It be happening due to a bug, which will
will open up a drop-down eventually be rectified.
which will ask you whether Right now the technology looks very
you want to create a Virtual promising and we expect to see it evolv-
machine, a Hard disk, or a ing as a robust hypervisor for Windows
You can install the OS for your VM from an optical
Floppy disk. platform, in the coming future.
disk, or from an ISO image

enterprise implementation-iis7_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:10 PM Page 68
IIS 7:A Modular Approach

SERIES Internet Information Server 7 changes the way Microsoft Web Server works by moving every-
IIS
PART I
thing into a modular pipelined approach
Vinod Unny, Enterprise Infotech
pipeline rather than a monolithic
I
n the Web world today, IIS and
Apache are the two leaders in Web implementation.
DIRECT HIT!
servers. Although a leader for a very Traditionally, IIS has always been an Applies To: Web admins
long time, Apache has slowly been all-or-nothing solution. That is, you ei- USP: The integrated pipeline
losing ground to IIS over the last few ther install IIS in full or don’t install it at allows features of IIS and
months as covered by Netcraft. all. Even in Windows Server 2003, al- ASP.NET to be used by other
A new version of IIS waiting in the though it was not installed by default, platforms such as PHP
wings is further set to erode the domi- when you chose to install IIS Web Server, Primary Link: www.iis.net
nance of Apache by introducing a huge it would install all the features associ- Google Keywords: iis7
bunch of features. We shall take a look ated with the Web server– whether you
at these features in the coming months. wanted them or not.
This month we start off with a two part In IIS7 this approach has been can pick and choose the modules you
look at the way IIS7 manages the fea- changed completely. Rather than hav- want to install. Before we get into that,
tures it provides using modules in a ing everything installed by default, you let’s look at the architectural differences
between IIS6 and IIS7 that make this
modularity possible.
IIS6 Architecture
AUTHENTICATION IIS 6 Architecture
IIS6 has what’s called the Classic Re-
None Basic NTLM
quest Pipeline. This is the traditional
SAP.NET method in which the core Web server
AUTHENTICATION can basically do one thing – pick up a re-
quested file and send it to the client. It
Forms Windows
also has a number of other features built
MAPPING in – such as Authentication (Anony-
mous, Basic, NTLM, etc), Logging, Com-
Static CGI ISAPI MAPPING
pression, etc. Using all of this, the Web
ASPX AXD
server is great at picking up static files
such as HTML and images and sending
them back to the client. But what about
RESPONSE non-static pages such as ASP/ASP.NET
Redirection Caching
or PHP? This is where a deterministic
feature creates a new path in the request
RESPONSE
pipeline. It has basically two parts – one
Logging Compression 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
IIS6’s Classic Request pipeline had many different paths depending on the requested user but divert it to the second part. The
file, which resulted in lots of feature duplication second part in turn is either a CGI or

enterprise implementation-iis7_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:11 PM Page 69
an ISAPI component that loads the file
and processes it before returning the IIS7 Architecture
output back to the original pipeline, so
that it is sent back to the client. Now AUTHENTICATION
comes the slightly strange part. The new
path that is created can also have its own None Basic NTLM Forms Windows
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
MAPPING
the IIS6 architecture to understand this.
Static CGI ISAPI ASPX AXD
IIS 7 Architecture
In 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.
RESPONSE
To give a better understanding of
what this means, consider this: the issue Logging Compression Redirection Caching
of feature duplication in IIS6 in different
pipelines, say Authentication in both IIS
and ASP.NET is now done away with.
IIS7 has an integrated pipeline where features of IIS and ASP.NET are both used as
Each type of authentication is simply a
modules in the pipeline, and even other platforms like PHP can use these features
module for IIS7 that can be integrated
into the main IIS pipeline itself. This able in IIS7 out of the box that can be using the modules of the pipeline like
means that now IIS7 itself can have not used on the websites on the IIS7 web any other module. That is to say, PHP
just Anonymous, Basic and NTLM au- server. There are many others that one too can start using features like Forms
thentication, but also Forms and Win- can either download or actually go and Windows authentication just like
dows based authentication. This goes for ahead and write in .NET using the IIS7 ASP.NET 2.0 can within IIS7. This gives
all other such features as well. SDK. But there is one more feature of PHP developers a great new Web server
In fact, the whole concept of having this modular approach that makes it a platform to develop on to be able to take
ISAPI or CGI as a jump-off point into a real killer application. advantage of features that the Web
different pipeline is now redundant (al- Remember that in IIS6, ASP.NET server provides rather than writing it
though still available in case of need for was an ISAPI extension and a 3rd party themselves.
backward compatibility). This platform such as PHP was a CGI app? This, however, is an article for an-
allows ASP.NET itself to be a part of the CGI traditionally has been slower as well other day. We’ll take a look at exactly
IIS7 pipeline rather than running as a as less supported on IIS6 due to its na- how to do this on IIS7 next month. Till
new path in the system. Now these are ture. However, due to the integrated na- then, head over to www.iis.net to see
not the only modules one can have – ture of the pipeline in IIS7, PHP can now some samples of other modules that are
there are more than 40 modules avail- be part of this pipeline as well and start available as well.

enterprise implementation_linux rescue box_final.qxp 10/20/2007 9:44 PM Page 68
The Linux Rescue Box

Create 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
Sanjay Majumder
the Rescue Server from the link given in
B
acking up data from your users’
workstations is one of the most the Direct Hit box. You will get an ISO file,
DIRECT HIT!
taxing jobs for a system admin- that has to be burnt on a CD using Nero Applies To: IT managers; Backup
istrator, and it gets tougher with more or any other CD writing software. Make Managers
machines, and even more if multiple sure you burn it at 4X writing speed. USP: Take image-based backups
OSs are involved. In this article, we will
of all machines on your network
see how to build a backup box, which Installation Primary Link:
http://www.linbox.org
will do an image-based backup of work- To install the Linux rescue server, hence-
stations and later on facilitate restora- forth called LRS, you will require at least Google Keywords: Linux rescue
tion over the network as well. Plus, it a P4 machine with 256 MB RAM and 80
can also be used to do remote image- GB HDD. Boot this machine with from the
based OS deployments on backbone ma- LRS CD you just created. It will ask you to To configure LRS, take another ma-
chines across the organization. fill in the IP address, Subnet mask, Gate- chine connected on the same Subnet
For this, we are using a Linux-based way, etc. and from a browser type in the IP
backup system called ‘Linux rescue Then you would be asked to select address http://<IP_Addrees_of_your
server’. The software will allow you to keyboard layout etc. The installation _Linux_Rescue_server>:1000. Give
take image-based backups of your Win- takes only 15 minutes. Remove the CD username as ’root’ and password as ’lin-
dows XP, Windows 2000/2003 or any and restart the machine and your LRS is box’ and you will be taken to its manage-
UNIX/Linux platform. You can download ready. 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
List of backup images that you can directly burn to a CD/DVD or configure it so that a interface. Set the ‘filename’ to ’/tftp-
user can directly restore their workstation over the network via PXE booting boot/revoboot/bin/ revoboot.pxe’. It

enterprise implementation_linux rescue box_final.qxp 10/20/2007 9:45 PM Page 69
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 This is the menu option that users see when they boot their machines using PXE. This
on this and specify the IP address range is where users can see the images of their machines for restoring or burning to a CD
for the DHCP and Apply the changes.
Now, click on ‘Start DHCP’. This will start can be restored back, easily. In order to the system where you have a CD
the DHCP server on your network, which do this, open the administrative console writer. If you want to move the backup
will also act as TFTP server. of LRS using a Web browser and go to image to boot menu, then go to the im-
‘System backup>Image’. age file and click on the upward arrow
Taking backups Here, you will be shown the layout of icon given in the ’To menu’ option. This
For taking backup, just boot a worksta- your boot menu and below that you will will move the image file into the list of
tion from its network card using PXE see the list of backup images (local or boot menu.
File name: client.conf
boot. On boot, you will get a text-based shared) that you have taken. You can ei- Then from the Web interface, select
menu. Select ’Add a client’. Now, you will ther burn these images on a CD/DVD, or the ’Boot menus’ tab and you will see
be asked for client-name and password, alternatively, you can move the backup the backup image that you have moved
give ’root’ as the client-name and pass- images to the boot menu. This way, has come into the boot menu list. Click
word as ’linbox’. On successful login, you when a user workstation is booted from on Apply button to reflect the changes
will get another boot menu which lets PXE, the backup image is shown in the in the boot menu.
you launch the system backups and boot menu and the user can restore back Now when the client workstation
restorations. Select the option ’Image his/her machine just by selecting the boots from the PXE, the boot menu will
creation shared’. This will connect the backup image name, from the boot also contain the name of the image file
machine to the Linux rescue server menu. The restoration would be done di- that we have configured above. By se-
where all backup images are kept. It will rectly from the LRS system over the net- lecting that image, the restoration
automatically start taking the backup of work. process will be triggered and the work-
machines and once the backup process is If you want to create a CD/DVD out station will be restored back to its origi-
over the machines are automatically of the backup image, just click on nal state.
made to shutdown. Burn icon given next to the backup im- This is only one of the useful fea-
age. The system will first create an ISO tures of Linbox that we have demon-
Managing backups image of the entire backup and then you strated in this article. There are so many
Once the backup is taken as an image, can either burn ISO images directly on other useful features like inventory
next step is to configure the image in that system or you can later on management, file backup etc, that

such a way that remote workstations download the ISO image and burn it on you can explore yourself.

Enterprise Implementation-Version Control_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:09 PM Page 68
Keep an Eye on Your Code

Subversion 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
Rakesh Sharma
tool that is conceptually very similar to
I
n software companies, a code is devel-
oped in parts by different software de- Concurrent Version Control (CVS). It con-
DIRECT HIT!
velopers. The code that is finally sists of a repository of data located at the Applies To: IT Managers
optimized and delivered to the client is server and a copy for the required docu- Price: Free
more or less an assimilation of the isolated ment kept at the user end, known as local
USP: Keeping track of changes
code generated by these developers. As copy. Whenever someone wants to edit the in documents
these different packets pass through dif- content of the document, he edits the lo-
Primary Link:
ferent levels, chances of inadvertent er- cal copy, keeping the original copy intact. http://subversion.tigris.org/
rors creeping in become high. So it is After the changes have been done, the
Google Keywords: Subversion
necessary to keep track of the code and en- copy stored on the repository is updated.
sure that unwanted mistakes can be re- A good thing about this software is that
verted back without hassles. To ensure unlike CVS, the tool commits the changes Installation & configuration
this as well as improve the speed at which only if the entire commit process is com- For implementing subversion, one has to
documents are processed, you need a soft- pleted or else it doesn’t. This helps in situ- install Apache 2.0, Subversion 1.4.5 and
ware utility that can keep track of all this ations when a network failure occurs Tortoise SVN on the system. You can get
and notify developers in case the same line while committing changes. In this article the Apache 2.0 installation file from
is edited by more than one developer. Sub- we show you how to implement, configure Apache website and the rest from the link:
version is one such Open Source and free and use this version control system. 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
In the ‘Working copy’ folder, you can check the status of documents that have been directory. Open up Apache configuration
updated on the repository file ‘httpd.conf,’ which can be found

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-
To update changes, made to the local copy of a document, on the repository, right
eSVN request and the URL that is should
click on ‘working copy’ folder and click on ‘Update to revision’
use for Subversion repository. Open the
Apache configuration file and add the fol- to the repository is specified on the 4th After the repository has been created,
lowing lines at the end of the file: line of the code provided above. So, if the one needs to import data to the reposi-
repository is in ‘svn’ directory, which is tory. But before that, one should organize
<Location /svn> under D: drive, then the path will be the repository so that data can be main-
DAV svn ‘D:\SVN’. tained easily later on. Most of the organ-
SVNListParentPath on izations use three different directories to
SVNParentPath D:\SVN Working with Subversion maintain the development cycle. The first
AuthType Basic To get working with this version control is the ‘trunk’ directory that contains the
AuthName "Subversion repositories" tool one has to create at least one reposi- final version of each code or document,
AuthUserFile passwd tory. A repository is a place where elec- second is ‘branches’ which contains the
#AuthzSVNAccessFile svnaccessfile tronic data is stored and maintained for a copies that are distributed among devel-
#Require valid-user specific purpose. For creating the reposi- opers to work on and the third is ‘tags’
</Location> tory, create a folder in D: drive and name which contains the tagged copies. For
it as ‘svn’. Right click on the newly cre- better understanding of subversion we
For simplicity, we have ignored the ated folder and select TortoiseSVN > Cre- will create only one folder, named ‘repo.’
line ‘Require valid-user,’ which is basi- ate Repository here. It will ask ‘select the Importing data to the repository is
cally used for user authentication when- type of repository you want to create.’ In pretty simple. Create a new folder on the
ever someone wants to access the our case we chose BDB. Once the reposi- desktop and name it ‘test.’ Copy the file
repository. The first line tells Apache that tory is created, one can see different files which you want to add to the repository
Subversion repository is available inside the ‘svn’ folder. These are configu- to this newly created folder. For example,
through the following URL; ‘http: ration and settings files, so please don’t we copied six different text files to this
//<server name or IP> /svn/’. The path edit them or else it’ll give errors. folder. After this, right click on the

‘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
Use the TortoiseMerge tool to simultaneously view changes made to different ver-
on the newly created folder and go to Tor-
sions of the code by different developers
toiseSVN > Checkout. A ‘Checkout’ dia-
log will appear asking the URL of the copy he or she has is up-to-date or not. For is wrong. To check yourself, open up the
repository, where you can also see the this, right click on the ‘Working Copy’ document which has conflict and you’ll
path to ‘Checkout Directory’. Click on folder and go to TortoiseSVN > Update. If notice the conflict area marked as:
‘Ok’ to get working copies. In the next the copy you have is up-to-date then there
window it will show the files and folders will be no conflict and you can commit <<<<<<< filename
that are being copied to the ‘Working the changes. For this, right click on the your changes
Copy’ folder and the final status. Now the same folder and go to TortoiseSVN > =======
files that you want to work with are in the Commit. code merged from repository
‘Working Copy’ folder. A conflict occurs when more than two >>>>>>> revision
After one has finished working on a people change the same line in a document
particular file, the changes should be or a code. Now this tool doesn’t know any- So, wherever any conflict happens,
made to the repository as well. Before thing about the document or the devel- this version control tool generates three
committing or making the change to the oper’s code that has been modified, as it different file into the ‘Working Copy’
repository, one should check whether the doesn’t understand what is right and what 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-
In Log Messages, you can view the time and date of changes made by different devel- eSVN > Resolved. Finally, save the
opers on a particular software code changes to the repository.

enterprise implementation- ossec hids.qxp 10/22/2007 10:06 PM Page 68
Host Intrusion Detection with OSSEC

Maintaining 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
Swapnil Arora
detecting an attack, its active response
W
ith an increase in number of
attacks, system breaches, component either automatically blocks
DIRECT HIT!
and software exploits the attacking machine or executes a Applies To: Network and secu-
within an enterprise, integrity of the specified script/program. Its log analy- rity managers
system is a concern. This problem is sis has support for Apache, ISS, Squid, USP: Monitoring machines
further compounded by tools that can event logs, Snort etc. and it automati- with OSSEC
delete traces of an attacker. HIDS (Host cally analyzes the content of log files. Primary Link: www.ossec.net
based intrusion detection) is one popu- If an odd entry is detected, it Google Keywords: HIDS,
lar technique used for intrusion immediately sends an alert. OSSEC
detection. Here, we look at the imple-
mentation of an open source HIDS OSSEC Architecture
called OSSEC-HIDS, which can The architecture of this solution is a events through encrypted traffic to
detect rootkits, perform file integrity simple Server-Agent architecture as ossec-remoted running on the server.
checking, log analysis, and registry shown in the figure below. It uses All events are then passed to ossec-
monitoring. ossec-syscheckd daemon for monitoring analysisd, which decodes and analyzes
On the feature front, this solution the file for changes at the server as well the logs and all other events. All active
provides time based alerts and active as the agent end. The ossec-syscheckd responses are handled by ossec-execd
response components. It supports both also keeps track of the file’s (the one that and email alerts are handled by ossec-
standalone and server-agent models for is being monitored) md5sum, date, file maild, both running at the server end.
Linux/Unix, but doesn’t support stand- permissions etc. The ossec-logcollector
alone monitoring on a Windows daemon on the agent collects logs, Installation
machine. This is because one can’t passes them to the ossec-agentd which To install the OSSEC server, download
install its server on Windows. After in turn passes logs as well as details of all 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
OSSEC-HIDS Architecture
machine. Now, untar and unzip the
AGENT SERVER package by using the following
logcollector syscheckd command:
syscheckd logcollector
(daemon to (daemon to
monitor host) collect logs) analysisd tar -zxvf ossec-hids-latest.tar.gz
(event analysis,
enforces configura-
. tion and rules, .
generates alerts)
Now, go to the location where you
. have extracted the package and execute
execd agentd
remoted the installation script by using the
(daemon for (event forward- execd
(daemon for command:
managing ing and sends
active
responses) server notifica- maild (daemon
response
tions ) for generating
forwarding )
email alerts) # ./install.sh
OSSEC-HIDS uses seven daemons to communicate between server and agent The script will now ask the kind of

Enterprise Implementation- OSSEC HIDS.qxp 10/22/2007 9:59 PM Page 69
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
Before agent monitors the host, a specific key is to be generated on the server for
is simple, just download the .exe from
authentication, which is then manually entered on the agents
the OSSEC’s website and run it.
After installation, provide authenti- Configuring Web User must be accessible at http: //<local-
cation key, to get agent authenticated by Interface host>/ossec-wui/.
the server. Authentication key is gener- OSSEC’s WUI does not come integrated
ated at the OSSEC server, but before gen- with the core package. You have to Configuring rules for
erating a key, you’ve to add agents to it. download its WUI package using the Windows monitoring
To do this, go to the location /var/os- ‘http://www.ossec.net/files/ui/ossec- After installing an agent on Windows,
sec/bin on the machine that has OSSEC wui-0.2.tar.gz’ link. Download it, untar you can also customize the rules for mon-
server installed and then run the./man- it, and move the extracted files to your itoring. These rules are configured on OS-
age_agents command. Now, to add an Web server directory say /var/www/os- SEC server. Once the server gets updated,
agent, type ‘A’ and press Enter. Provide sec-wui. Now, go to the location where it will push the configured rules to the
the name of the agent, then provide the you have kept the extracted files and to agent. By default Windows policy moni-
IP address of the agent and lastly an ID start the WUI setup script run the toring files are present in the
for it. Now the script will ask you to con- following command: /var/ossec/etc/shared directory. In the
firm the information you provided. To directory you will find three files: win_ap-
confirm press ‘Y’. Once the agent is ./setup.sh plications_rcl.txt, win_audit _rcl. txt and
added, then to generate the key for the win_malware_rcl.txt. In win_applica-
agent, type‘E’ and press Enter. You will After this, you need to add Web tions_rcl.txt you will find the default
now be able to see an agent menu where server users (mostly Apache or www) to rules for detecting applications such as
you will find a list of all the agents that OSSEC group. Then configure per Yahoo, Skype, Limewire, AOL, and
you have added. Type in the ID of the missions for the tmp directory and Kazaa. You can also add new application
agent for which you want to generate for this run the commands written be- rules to this file. For example you can cre-
the key and the key will be generated. low: ate rules for detecting gtalk and generate
Copy and paste this key manually to the alerts. For this, open the file with VI and
agent that you earlier installed on the #chmod 770 /tmp write the following command lines:
machine that you want to monitor. The #chgrp apache /tmp
agent will get automatically authenti- [Chat/IM - gtalk] [any] []
cated by the OSSEC server. and then restart Apache. Your WUI C:\Program Files\Google\Google

cover story-its wans and vpns_anil.qxp 10/24/2007 7:04 PM Page 16
Cover Story
Strategies for
a Healthy WAN
Toward a Well-connected
Enterprise
Anil Chopra and Swapnil Arora
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 across
the 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 to
some key pain points in WAN management

puts additional stress on the WAN connectivity. That’s

because most of the processing takes place centrally,
and branch offices require WAN connectivity to access
centrally 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 equally
important. Availability can be managed in many ways:
providing backup links, going for third party support to
monitor your links, and enforcing stringent SLAs to
name a few. Ensuring bandwidth availability on the
other hand is not a one-time process, but an ongoing
one.
The third key issue is security, which becomes
more important when an organization uses the Internet
to interconnect its various branch offices. The way out
here is by using VPNs. They can provide secure con-
nectivity between both branch offices and HO, and
even between roaming mobile users and the HO.
There’s a fourth aspect that’s extremely important as
well, of SLAs. They play an important role in not only
ensuring high availability of WAN links, but also ensur-
ing bandwidth and QoS. There’s a lot more to SLAs, and
we’ll cover that subsequently.
So as one can well imagine, there are lots of issues
to be tackled when it comes to managing WAN links
and 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 talked
about and how were they handling them. As one could
well imagine, it’s not an easy job and requires a well-
planned strategy. In this story, we’ll talk about this in
more detail.
Identify and manage pain points

The first step in WAN management is to identif y the
key pain points with your existing WAN infrastructure
setup. Is it availability of your WAN links? Is it band-
width, security, or something else? Let’s look at them
wo key trends are fueling the WAN market one by one.
T growth today. One is branch office automation,

wherein organizations are trying to empower
their branches with IT. Second is IT infrastructure con-
Link availability
More than 50% of our respondents found it to be some-
solidation, wherein organizations are moving away what of an issue. Lack of availability in WAN links hap-
from distributed computing and moving their entire IT pens only sometimes. This is possibly because a
infrastructure in one central location. While this en- majority of them already have backup lines, which
sures better manageability of the IT infrastructure, it takes care of downtime. However this is not the only

Cover Story
How are your branch offices connected with HO?
No answer
Choice of WAN Links
4% A majority of the respondents said that they were using
private WAN links to interconnect their branch offices.
Very few said they were using only Internet for branch
Over private WAN office connectivity, and the remaining were using a mix
Links
37% A mix of both
of both private as well as Internet links.
41% Interestingly, none of the respondents who were using
the Internet for WAN links were doing any sort of WAN
optimization; and just about everybody over private
links was either using a WAN Optimizer or doing some
sort of QoS or bandwidth prioritization for their appli-
Over the Internet
18%
cations. Most of the organizations having more than
100 branch offices were using private WAN links.
solution. Companies could also outsource their WAN nobody available to fix it.
management to a third party, which will ensure that the
links are always available. This is a good and cost effec- Give some basic training to branch staff
tive strategy to adopt for organizations with a large Another thing to do is to give some basic training to at
number of branches, like banks. That’s because it least one person in the branch on what to do should the
would be unfeasible for them to hire manpower just to WAN link fail. This doesn’t have to be a detailed tech-
manage their WAN links in their remote branch of- nology walk through. A few basic guidelines would suf-
fices. It’s better to hire a third party and let them worryfice. For instance, the person should know where the
about it. What the organization should do is implement WAN link is terminating in the branch office, and be
the right management solutions to keep track of its able to identify the particular cable. In the case we just
WAN links. This would help in immediately identifying mentioned, the reason for downtime turned out to be a
links that are down, so that corrective measures can be pulled out WAN cable, possibly by the cleaning staff
taken. The other thing it should do is put in stringent while cleaning in the morning. If the local person is
SLAs that define the time period within which down- given the basic knowledge to check for such things,
time would be tackled. We’ve seen situations where a downtime can be reduced.
complete bank branch was unoperational for many One must keep in mind that in branch offices, these
hours because its WAN links were down and there was kinds of practical situations can occur and therefore
should not be neglected.
What measures have you taken to minimize
downtime of your WAN links?
Understand your bandwidth needs
No answer Another critical pain point as far as WAN manag-
Other 6%
Stringent SLAs 7%
ment goes is availability of bandwidth. One of the
with service
provider reasons for this can be the ISP, which can be tack-
13%
eld by putting in stringent SLAs. In fact, in our sur-
Have out- vey, the overall satisfaction level of the
sourced WAN
management to Have backup links respondents with the level of service offered by
a third party 63%
11% their service providers was quite high.
The bigger issue is judging your actual band-
width requirements. How many applications are
currently loading your WAN links, and how many
more applications are you likely to add in the fu-

Cover Story
ture? Are your WAN links geared to handle How many service providers are you using for your WAN
the additional load? As infrastructure consoli- connectivity?
dation and data center centralization is becom- No answer
2%
Other
ing a trend, you’ll be running more 11% One
22%
applications over your WAN links. Is your Four
15%
service provider geared to provide you more
bandwidth as and when you add more applica- Three
13%
tions? This may not be much of an issue in case Two
of a large service provider offering you con- 37%
nectivity in your head office. The service

provider could give you Bandwidth on De-
mand facilities, allowing you to scale up as
much as you need and charge you only for the
duration when you really used it. The trouble
again comes in branch offices. Is the local service facility, then the next thing you must check is how long
provider for your branch office geared to provide more would the service provider take to upgrade your band-
bandwidth? Again, we’ve seen cases where the service width. Would the service provider offer Bandwidth on
provider is just not able to offer this facility. Demand, or would there be a bureaucratic process of
Even if a WAN service provider does promise such applying for additional bandwidth?
How many service providers?

How satisfied are you with the service offered by
The interesting thing we found in our
your WAN service provider(s)?
survey was that a majority of the re-
spondents were using two serrvice
60% providers. However, there were a sig-
% Responses
40%
nificant 28% of them who were using
20% three to four service providers.Your
0%
choice of a service provider depends
upon a number of things. One of
1
Not satisfied 2 course is reach. Is your service
3
4 provider able to offer you connectivity
5
across all your branch offices? Even
Highly satisfied
if the service provider is, then the next
question is related to availability. Is
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Cover Story
sume how much bandwidth in a particular
How difficult is an issue defining SLAs with your time.
WAN service provider? Before deploying a WAN optimization
solution it’s very important to what exactly
is going on your WAN. If you are accessing
50%
ERP or SAP application over the WAN, you
41%
40% might be better off deploying a Application
% Responses
30% Accelerator than WAN optimizer.

22%
WAN optimization has also made a mark
20% 9%
4% 7% in DR, as an enterprise needs to backup
10%
huge volumes of data every day at a remote
0%
1 location through a WAN. Again, to handle
Not Difficult 2
3
4 many enterprises deploy large WAN links
5
Very Difficult between the remote DR site and data cen-
ter. In many cases data replication cannot
be postponed to non-peak hours and
backup has to be performed every hour or
it worth risking giving your complete WAN infrastruc- so.
ture to a single service provider? What if the service WAN optimization appliances improve the time taken
provider’s links were to fail? How many redundant to transfer data by using techniques like data reduction,
paths does the provider have to ensure that your con- where appliance constantly monitors data flowing across
nectivity doesn’t get hampered? In some cases, it might and if it encounters repetitive data, it will provide it lo-
make sense to go with more than one. Some companies cally. By reducing the amount of repetitive data sent,
we know of have outsourced the complete WAN infra- WAN traffic is significantly reduced.
structure management to a single service provider. The In Compression, appliance uses a common compres-
service provider in turn ties up with other service sion algorithm to remove extra information from the traf-
providers to offer redundancy, availability, etc. fic before it is transmitted. The information is
reconstituted at the destination using that same algo-
B/W Optimization Appliances rithm and there is no synchronization between two ends.
WAN optimization has been one the most talked about With this technique data transmitted over WAN is re-
tecnologies for the past year. It is basically a collection duced link, but has limitations on how much bandwidth
of techniques to enhance the performance of applica- reduction it can achieve by itself–-and has minimal im-
tions over your WAN. A WAN optimization appliance pact on latency. Another commonly used technique is
uses a combination of various techniques like compres- caching in which at both ends data transmitted is in-
sion, TCP optimization, WAFS, caching, SSL accelera- spected and the appliance stores all duplicate data lo-
tion, etc. Strangely, despite all the hype, we didn’t get a
very enthusiastic response on using WAN optimization Have you ever faced a breach of SLA by your WAN
appliances. In our survey only 15% of respondents said service provider?
they were planning to deploy a WAN optimization solu- No Answer
tion in near future, while 47% said they had no plans of 4%
doing so at all. Those who had deployed such solutions Yes

37%
did manage to save bandwidth. About 13% of the respon- No
59%
dents said that they had managed to save 20--30% of their
bandwidth, 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. you
can limit which users, or application or an IP can con-

Cover Story
in improving the response time of applications.
Are you using VPN connectivity in your enterprise?
Other Optimization Techniques If so, what type?
WAN optimization appliances have just come,
but companies have been following other tech- We’re using both site-to-site and access VPN 22%
niques to optimze their bandwidth. On top of the
list in our survey was Continuous monitoring of
We’re using access VPN for mobile users 15%
WAN traffic and usage of policies for Bandwidth
prioritization, access control, and policy rout-
We’re using site-to-site VPN 44%
ing. Some respondents even said that creating
user awareness worked well for them.
We don’t have VPN connectivity 15%
SLA Management
To achieve acceptable levels of quality, uptime, No answer 4%
latency, packet loss, SLAs play an important

role. In our survey, a large number of respon-
dents found it difficult to define SLAs with their
service providers. Guaranteed uptime and Which applications are you accessing over your
penalty for downtime were the top two items VPN?
that must be addressed in a SLA agreement.
Others
Many respondents said SLAs should have real- 8%
istic parameters for e.g. if a branch office is in

remote geographic location with limited con- VoIP 0%
nectivity, then most WAN service providers will

Our core business applications 48%
shy away from uptime clause in such a situation.
Others must have clauses including last mile Web 9%
support, response time, escalation matrix, and
clear definition of problem resolving timeframe, Email 24%
followed by penalties if not met.
About 37% of the respondents in our survey No answer 11%
said that they have faced a breach of SLA with

their WAN service provider while 59% were
happy customers. When asked how did they
deal with breach in SLA, most respondents
What’s the key challenge you’re facing with your
said discussions with service providers were
VPN connectivity?
good enough to resolve the issue while some
Other No answer
said they asked service providers for compen- 13% 13%
sation. When asked what was nature of the
Security
breach, a part of respondents refused to dis- 22%
close, while some said that the service

provider was ‘ not able to meet committed up-
time.’ Other responses included poor per-
formance, packet loss, and slow response
time.
Bandwidth fluctuations lead
to performance issues
VPN Connectivity 52%
Security becomes extremely important when

Cover Story
A few WAN Optimization Appliances
Blue Coat Silver Peak F5 WANJet

Blue Coat's ProxySG WAN Silver Peak NX is a WAN accel- WANJet operates at layer 4 and uses
optimization appliance eration solution. It uses tech- Session Matrix technology to deliv-
provides Internet security niques like data reduction, com- er LAN like performance over the
functions such as web fil- pression, QoS, hardware level WAN. It can accelerate applications
tering, logging, web anti- IPSec Encryption, and loss mit- such as file transfer, client-server
virus, spyware blocking, igation to provide high WAN core business applications, data
and peer-to-peer blocking. speeds. It operates at network replication, email, etc. It also sup-
As a result organizations layer of ISO stack. It uses disk- ports site-to-site SSL encryption,
can consolidate WAN opti- based data reduction for TCP optimization, QoS traffic shap-
mization and web security increasing performance and ing, and application proxy support
into one appliance. superior memory retention. for CIFS.
organizations avail Internet for WAN connectivity. In and host to gateway connections. IPSEC encrypts
such cases, VPN is one option to consider. In our sur- packets before transmissions and also validates data by
vey, 44% of the respondents said that they were using authentication of the source sending the packets.
only site-to-site VPNs, while another 22% said they were A recent development in IPSec is DMVPNs (Dy-
using both site-to-site and access VPN for mobile users. namic Multipoint VPN). In this using IPSec dynamic
Another 15% were not using VPN at all. About 48% of tunnels can be created as and when required between
the respondents were using VPNs to access their core Spoke-to-Spoke or Hub-to-Spoke. Direct spoke-to-
business applications while email and web were the spoke connection means two branch offices can com-
other two applications being accessed via VPN. municate with each other, without any traffic going to
The biggest issue that CIOs seem to be facing in HO. It only modifies the configuration files of IPSec tun-
VPNs is bandwidth fluctuations, which lead to perform- nel not the whole tunnel.
ance issues. This is an even bigger issue than security,
which came as the second most important issue, but far SSL VPN
behind the first one. SSL VPNs are deployed in Client-less environment and
mostly used for connecting roadwarriors to the office. It
Types of VPN works well when you don’t have much control over the
IPSec VPN: initially developed for site-to-site connec- end devices. In our survey ' these many ' respondents
tivity, it is now largely used by the enterprises in need said they are using VPNs for connecting roadwarriors to
of extra security and those who have geographically the corporate network. With SSL Enterprises you can
dispersed employees. IPSec VPNs are mostly used in limit access to specific resources, web applications etc.
addition to MPLS VPNS, works complementary to SSL at times is also used with IPsec.
MPLS VPNs. IPSec allows establishment of a VPN via Overall WAN mgmt is becoming increasingly critical
Internet and can provide secure gateway to gateway for organizations, and requires constant attention.

enterprise implementation_app mgmt_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:35 PM Page 68
Enterprise Solutions
How to Keep your

Applications Healthy
Rahul Sah, Rakesh Sharma and Saurangshu Kanunjna
S
oftware applications are the backbone of any organiza- teams juggling demands of hundreds of internally imple-
tion’s commercial activities. Irrespective of size, each mented applications, it is not easy to manage and utilize them
company depends on various software applications to to the optimum level. Importantly once an application has
accomplish every aspect of their business in today’s global been deployed it is costly and also difficult to make material
world. Companies invest millions on implementing the best changes to the application.
possible enterprise software in their premises. But soon after The ultimate result is that while enterprise applications
deployment, unless applications are managed continuously, it continue to become more important to the operation of the
can lead to downtime, causing business loss. business, issues with their performance become more preva-
Rising complexity intensifies the challenge of optimizing lent and difficult to identify, and resolve. Recognizing the im-
application performance. Enterprise application management portance of proper monitoring and management of
brings its own share of complex issues and challenges, the applications, we will focus on some of the best available tools
sheer abundance of them being the most pertinent. With IT for application management and performance monitoring

Database optimization tools

With 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 tools

Whenever 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
and also tell you some of the best practices for application man- application data gets stored on them. They have to meet the
agement. challenge of managing the database environment that not
An application monitoring tool can be a piece of software only increase in volume but also increase in complexity. The
or an appliance that continuously monitors, diagnoses and in- Quest Management Suite is a set of tools that can help a DBA
forms about problems that slow down applications you are to manage, monitor and diagnose problems on his SQL Server.
running. The suite consists of following:
Application performance relates to the speed as in how fast ● LiteSpeed, which is a backup and recovery tool.
transactions are completed or the information that is getting ● Capacity Manager, which is storage and resource
delivered to the end user by the application via a particular net- planning tool
work, application and Web services infrastructure. The idea ● Spotlight, a real-time performance diagnostic tool.
here is to detect and resolve the problem before users start ex- Here we will focus on Spotlight and see how a DBA can
periencing any difficulties or poor performance. benefit from the performance monitoring of the SQL Server.

Spotlight
A 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- Spotlight shows the activities of disk, memory and SQL processes in real-time for perform-
ity on a real time basis in a ance monitoring. Also the I/O speed is tracked for logical and physical data reads
graphical interface.
ify a working database that would be used by Spotlight to main-
Configuration and use tain monitoring counters and logs. When the configuration
For configuring Spotlight for the SQL Server, you have to spec- 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
The memory view of the server instance shows the buffer cache information along with process periodically that automati-
graphs for Hit Rates and Page Allocation on time scale cally sets a baseline for the server-

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 With the help of AppWatch one can view the error message, which will be exactly what the
is critical information, and as the user will be facing
Hit Ratio goes down, the DBA can
increase or clear the cache to maintain performance. application is taking more than the required time to respond
Spotlight also offers the option of viewing status and even though the database and application are running fine.
graphs for memory, SQL activities and database. Under Mem- Hence, it becomes difficult to identify where actually the appli-
ory view, the buffer cache of each database object and the page cation is taking time to respond.
allocation can be monitored. The SQL Activity view shows the Chroniker AppWatch provides you with a solution for the
current response time for data queries, Cache Hit rates and same. It’s a performance testing software that allows you to
CPU utilization information in graphical format. Spotlight also monitor the application, tells you its response time and what
maintains an Error log, which can be used to pinpoint the rea- the end user experience is. Using this software, one can easily
son for any server bottleneck. The DBA can also keep record of find the exact point where the application is taking time. For
how many active sessions are there to the server and how many example, does it take time to load the application or is it taking
users are currently accessing the server. Spotlight is an impor- time in querying the database. It also provides you with ‘analy-
tant tool for a DBA to keep the database server up and running, sis reports’ such as SLA reports. It automatically generates re-
by eliminating bottlenecks before they can happen. ports such as the ‘n’ slowest tasks per month, 10 least available
tasks per month, etc.
Chroniker AppWatch The interesting fact about this software is that it can simu-
At times system administrators receive the message that an late the real user behavior. It automatically finds icons on the
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Interested in a product With each product we Type in the PIMS code

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this issue? code it to 56767
We will send your request to the vendor the same day. The vendor will call you on your cellphone number
Using the Chroniker AppWatch browser interface one can remotely keep track of all the scenarios including the overall status
desktop even if the position of the icon is changed, as it cap- sign of the test suite, one has to note down what steps will
tures and recognizes a Windows object just as a human does. evolve during the test. For example, to open a particular appli-
Also when a Web page is getting loaded, you can configure the cation you have to find the respective shortcut on the desktop
software to wait until the page is fully loaded so that a partic- and then double click on it. For writing the test suite, open up
ular action can be taken, such as putting search string after the the ‘Scenario Builder’ form and Start > All Programs >
required text box is loaded completely. Moreover, its user Chroniker > Scenario Station.
friendly interface lets you design test suites without having For convenience, we will load an already written script,
prior scripting knowledge. which can be found under the ‘script’ directory named ‘Nrg-
Here, we show how it can be done. Before starting the de- Website.csc.’ Save it by another name say ‘IExplorer.’ Now for
Best Practices in Application Management

Following best practices provide a frame- adopted: tic on the most important aspects of its
work for achieving results efficiently. Step 1: Baseline- Under normal condi- performance. Hence, by interpreting
Right now application performance man- tions both network and individually crit- flow-level data into actionable informa-
agement is more of reactive trou- ical applications should be baselined to tion it helps maximize efficiency and min-
bleshooting than proactive. So when an determine performance parameters. imize response time.
application slowdown is reported, the IT Whenever an application performance Step 3: Categorizing and isolating the
staff determines the cause behind the problem is reported, the baseline can in- problem – It’s important to first under-
problem and tries to minimize the oper- stantly offer data for comparison. stand the type of problem and then cate-
ational and business impact from the Step 2: Application Flow Analysis- This gorize it for isolation. There can be
slowdown. However, there are measures involves analyzing the application during several reasons for the problem, hence
that can be taken to make the process of the flow level, i.e. during an application categorization is important.
application management more proactive. conversation, as opposed to packet level Causes for trouble can be application
Here are a few practices that can be and then presenting the summary statis- code, which if written inefficiently is

using this test suite remotely, one needs to register it to tern, and content analysis, right down to the individual user
‘Chroniker base’. For this, go to Tools menu and then click on level. Like wise, there can be several other methods to deter-
‘Register Scenario’. Now open Internet Explorer on any other mine key parameters of an application from an end-user per-
computer which is attached to the same network and open the spective. For eg, user performance measurement can enable
page http://<ip-address>:8888/, where ‘<ip-address>’ is the real time monitoring of user activities and individual user ac-
IP of the system where Chroniker software is installed. When tivity can be analyzed for problem detection and diagnosis for
the Web page gets loaded, navigate to Modules > Applications. quick resolution. Live Session Capture and Replay helps to
Here, all scenarios are listed along with the number of trans- capture, search and store each end user’s actual Web
actions they have and their status. Moreover, when an applica- experience.
tion fails to execute, you can view the screen shot of the page One can track what a user did and how the system re-
where the error has occurred. sponded. Report on the service level of synthetic transaction
To run the scenario immediately, click on ‘Run this sce- by business processes, geographic location or time period is
nario now’ icon on the row where scenarios are listed. A win- again one of the key methods to understand the end user per-
dow will appear which will show you results such as response spective. Another key point is capacity determination so as to
time, after executing the scenario. identify bottlenecks such as ineffective load balancing and
poorly performing servers.
End user measurement Understanding the end user perspective and managing the
A key concern for any organization is effective maintenance same result in several benefits for the organization, such as
of applications so that the end user doesn’t face any problems maximizing application productivity or profit potential by un-
while using them. To maintain high level of online service derstanding user behavior, think-time and navigation path.
quality, organizations must adopt an application and service Also you can learn how your users are using the application
management strategy that helps companies ensure that end through usage reports and trend analysis. By optimizing the
users receive the best possible experience while using them. application potential you will be enhancing overall user expe-
Some key areas must be addressed from the user perspective rience. Another key benefit is the practice of proactive service
are: capabilities to measure application performance and user level management by aligning IT service delivery to initia-
experience; and understanding of the usage level, usage pat- tives and goals.
bound to create a negative impact, irre- any connection with poor application or cycle – consuming activities such as
spective of whether the application is performance. unscheduled backups, can also be the
transactional or streaming in nature or Another reason for the problem source of slow application performance.
performs bulk file transfer. The problem could be understanding of protocols. At Application performance tools can iden-
will be evident if monitored by an appli- times inefficient network protocol is be- tify this problem and intimate the IT staff
cation management system. Another hind an application performance prob- about the same.
cause for the problem could be network lem. An application performance The advanced application manage-
infrastructure. management tool can help determine ment solution allows taking data which
Before application performance such kind of issues and facilitate better they generate and convert them into a
management solutions came into pic- understanding of how a protocol works. more illustrated, comprehensive report
ture, inadequate bandwidth was consid- This in turn helps developers to tune the which helps the IT team to maintain a
ered to be the primary cause of poor protocol, making it better for the appli- track record of the behavior of certain
application performance. But now with cation. applications. These in turn help them
companies investing significantly on Sometimes an underpowered understand the applications and device
bandwidth improvement it has been server, outdated operating system, proper maintenance schedule depend-
clearly found out that this doesn’t have clients running unauthorized software, ing on their behavior.

zk for java_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:21 PM Page 76
Developer
Implementing Ajax with ZK

The ZK framework allows you to create Ajax-based Web applications, without even requiring to write complex
JavaScript.We’ll create a web application and integrate it with business logic in this article
Rahul Sah
DIRECT HIT!
W
ith the advent of Web 2.0, the is an Open Source Ajax framework that
Web browser has become a allows Java Web developers to create rich
Applies To: Web developers
platform for delivering busi- Web applications, quite easily. USP: Create rich user interfaces
ness applications to users and we have ably for your applications
matched the functionalities that only thick ZK framework Primary Link: http://www.zkoss.
client software could exhibit. ZK’s Ajax engine consists of both client org/download/
The benefits of delivering applications and server side components that commu- Keywords: ZK Ajax framework
over the Web rather than distributing them nicate with each other. The framework PCQ Extreme DVD: system/
as stand-alone desktop applications are uses JavaScript but the complexity to im-
aplenty, but for that we need to write com- plement an Ajax framework has been con-
plex client-side JavaScripts. cealed from the Web developers.ZK has work engine with our Web application. The
Ajax technology, as part of Web 2.0, two sets of interface components, one is ZK engine has servlets for ZK-based pages
came as a boon to developers to create dy- based on XUL (XML User interface Lan- and also to handle client-server communi-
namic and responsive interfaces, but writ- guage) and other is based on XUML (XML cations. By inserting the following code
ing JavaScripts was still an overhead.The User interface Markup Language). The snippet into the web.xml file, we can regis-
answer to this problem comes as ZK, which framework has been explained earlier in ter the loader that evaluates ZK-based
the March ’07 issue of PCQuest. pages and also do the mapping of .zul and
In this article, we will see how to develop a .zhtml pages to the servlet.
Web application, using ZK framework and
how it can be integrated with business <servlet>
logic. <servlet-name>zkLoader</servlet-name>
<servlet-class> org.zkoss.zk.ui.http.Dhtm-
ZK in action lLayoutServlet </servlet-class>
On this month’s PCQ Extreme DVD, we <init-param>
have provided the RC 3 release of the ZK <param-name>update-uri</param-name>
framework.We will be using Eclipse as IDE <param-value>/zkau</param-value>
and Tomcat 5.5 as the Web server. </init-param>
Create a new Web project, using Eclipse <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
and name it as ZKdemo.Extract the zk- </servlet>
bin-3.0.0-RC.zip archive at ZK_DIR. Now, <servlet-mapping>
copy the “z*”jar files from ZK_DIR/ <servlet-name>zkLoader</servlet-name>
dist/lib folder to your application’s WEB- <url-pattern>*.zul</url-pattern>
INF/lib folder.You would also be required </servlet-mapping>
to import bsh.jar from ZK_DIR/ <servlet-mapping>
dist/lib/ext folder to your application’s <servlet-name>zkLoader</servlet-name>
WEB-INF/lob folder.You can also import <url-pattern>*.zhtml</url-pattern>
commons-io.jar, if your application would </servlet-mapping>
ZK jars required by application are placed be using them to upload files.
in WEB-INF/lib folder We now have to register the ZK frame- As Ajax does asynchronous com-

zk for java_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:18 PM Page 77
Developer
munication between client and server, we that through a database.We will create a of the manager, but in real application
need to register the asynchronous update Java Bean named City.java to represent the scenarios, the object would be returning
engine for ZK , by inserting following code city name. the cities list from a database table.
snippet into web.xml of our Web app. public class City
{ <window>
<servlet> private String _cityName; <zscript>
<servlet-name>auEngine</servlet-name> public City(String cityName) import City;
<servlet-class> {_cityName = cityName;} import CityManager;
org.zkoss.zk.au.http.DhtmlUpdate- public String getCityName() manager=new CityManager();
Servlet</servlet-class> { return _cityName; } manager.addCity(new City("Calcutta"));
</servlet> public void setCityName(String name) manager.addCity(new City("Mumbai"));
<servlet-mapping> { _cityName = name; } manager.addCity(new City("New Delhi"));
<servlet-name>auEngine</servlet-name> } manager.addCity(new City("Raipur"));
<url-pattern>/zkau/*</url-pattern> cities = manager.listCities();
</servlet-mapping> Now, we will create a manager for City </zscript>
that will do Add and List operations for Select a City: <listbox mold="select">
Now, we can head start with creating the City instance and name it as CityMan- <listitem forEach="${cities}"
our ZUML pages for our app. Create a new ager.java. label="${each.cityName}"
file in the ZKdemo folder and name it as value="${each}"/>
hello.zul.Adding the following code snip- public class CityManager </listbox>
pet will make our first page. The first line { </window>
sets the title for the browser window, while private List<City> _cities = new
the code after that creates a window titled LinkedList<City>(); The script for ZK is enclosed between
‘Hello’ within the HTML page. public List<City> listCities() { return <zscript> tags.In the DVD, along with the
_cities; } ZK binary, you’ll see that we’ve placed this
<?page title="ZK try out"?> public void addCity(City city) { script in a tabbed window. The final page
<window title="Hello"> _cities.add(city); } layout has some examples displayed up
Hello ZK Demo Page!!! } from the demo code that ZK provides.
</window> Also it is advisable to download the devel-
In this script, we will use a POJO opers guide from the site as a handy refer-
To test our application, build and place retrieved by a “Manager” object, which ence to ZK framework.
the war file in Tomcat’s webapps directory. will fetch and display the
Start the Tomcat server (considering that list. If we were supposed to
your server’s listening port is 8080) and go use JavaScript, that process
to http:// localhost:8080/ ZKdemo/ would have been a bit com-
hello. zul. plex to fetch the list as Java
If all is well, that is if we’ve Collection object and iterat-
successfully registered the ZK Ajax engine ing on that to produce the
in web.xml and imported all necessary jar list. But with ZK, we have a
files required by the framework, then we ‘forEach’ attribute to do the
will see the Hello message on our browser. iterations on the Cities and
display that list.
Business logic integration The following code snip-
Let’s move ahead and bring some interac- pet does this task. Here we
tion between our interface and the back- have hard-coded the city
end. Say, we have to display a list of cities names into the City object by Tab1 shows the city list as a result of the script code
to our users for selection and we populate using the addCity() method we created

dynamic data controls in asp.net 'futures'_final.qxp 10/20/2007 9:05 PM Page 84
Developer
Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET Futures

SERIES
The ASP.NET Futures stack contains a new set of controls that can be used to create Web pages that
VS 08
PART III can manipulate databases with even lesser code
Vinod Unny, Enterprise InfoTech
DIRECT HIT!
I n 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.
opers to quickly create a table displaying
results of a query. However, in Dynamic
Data controls, even this has been dis-
pensed with.
Applies To: Advanced .NET
developers
USP: Create Ajax enabled web-
These allow developers to get productive All these controls work on the principle sites on the fly
very quickly by providing a set of features of database schema directly.That is to say, Primary Link: http://www.microsoft.
that are most commonly used in their spe- if you create Web pages that map directly com/downloads/details.aspx?
cific scenario. For instance, by simply to objects in your database, you can get
Google Keywords: ASP.Futures
dropping in a Login or CreateUserWizard the pages to work without writing any
control onto a Web page, a developer could CRUD level code at all. For instance, in
start building in security features to the case you have a table called ‘authors’ in instance, you can call it ‘authors.aspx’ if
site.Keeping the same tradition alive, your database and you create a new Web there is a table called ‘authors.’
ASP.NET ‘Futures’ release – an upcoming page called ‘authors.aspx’ in your website, By default, the page contains a
version of the popular ASP.NET program- you will automatically get a page that Dynamic AutoData control. However, for
ming stack – has a number of new controls contains all data manipulation features this case, delete the control and drop in a
for that table. But before we get into that,
as well. In this article, we take a look at the Dynamic List control on the page. Press
new Dynamic Data controls. let’s take a look at how to proceed. Ctrl-F5 to run the page.When the
One of the most common tasks in cre- If you have Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 browser opens, you will see that the page
ating Web pages is displaying data from a or above and have installed the ASP.NET contains a GridView with sort, pagination
database in a table to the user. In ASP.NET Futures stack, create a new website from and edit/update functionality.And all
2.0, the GridView and SQLDataSource con- the Dynamic Data Web template. Open up this without writing a single line of code.
trols were introduced that allowed devel- the Web.config of the site and in the On the page, drop in a Dynamic Details
<connection- control and refresh it in the browser.You
Strings> section will see that the GridView now has a De-
add a connection tailsview also attached to it that displays-
string to a database details of the row selected.
on your machine. We can now go ahead and add a
Once this is done, Dynamic Filter control on the page as well.
right click the solu- This control needs at least one property to
tion and select ‘Add be set, called the ColumnName. This is the
New Item…’ In the column on which filtration will happen in
template box, in- the Dynamic List control.You can also
stead of selecting a change the appearance of the filter from
Web form, select the default drop down to a radio or list as
‘Dynamic Data Web- well, by supplying the FilterType property.
form.’ Now name the For instance, to filter on a column called
ASP.NET page based contract and show it as radio buttons in-
The output of the DynamicAutoData control. Note the name of on a table or view in stead of a drop down, the control would
the ASPX page and the functionality that is offered your database. For look like this:

Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET 'Futures'_final.qxp 10/20/2007 9:03 PM Page 85
Developer
case you wish to namic List control by default returns all
customize the look of the columns of the table. However to cus-
the Dynamic List tomize the output, you can override a
control, simply supply a method called GetColumns like this:
template GridView, like
this: public override IEnumerable Get-
Columns()
<asp:GridView {
ID="GridView1" return new object[]
runat="server" Back- {
Color="White" new DynamicDataColumn
(
BorderColor="#E7E7FF" "Full Name",
BorderStyle="None" delegate { return EvalS("au_fname")
BorderWidth="1px" + " " + EvalS("au_lname"); }
CellPadding="3" ),
GridLines="Horizon- "City",
tal"> "State"
<RowStyle Back- };
Color="#E7E7FF" Fore- }
A custom data page using different dynamic data
Color="#4A3C8C" />
controls
<PagerStyle Back- This changes the output of the control
<asp:DynamicFilter ID="DynamicFilter1" Color="#E7E7FF" ForeColor="#4A3C8C" /> with a new column called Full Name that
runat="server" ColumnName="contract" <SelectedRowStyle shows the concatenated name of the au-
FilterStyle="Radio" /> BackColor="#738A9C" thor and the city and state fields only.
ForeColor="#F7F7F7" />
You can also create a RSS feed for <HeaderStyle BackColor="#4A3C8C" Dynamic Auto Data
the data in the table for this page, Font-Bold="True" ForeColor="#F7F7F7" /> This is the control that does everything
so that users can subscribe to be <AlternatingRowStyle the above controls do on a single page.
informed of any changes in the table. BackColor="#F7F7F7" /> This gets created automatically on the
All you need to do is drop a Dynamic </asp:GridView> page when you create a new table based
RSS Link control on the page and sub- page and when you view it you will get all
scribe to the URL that it creates. <asp:DynamicList ID="DynamicList1" the functionality for table manipulation
The Dynamic Data controls also let you runat="server" ControlID="GridView1" /> you need on the page without writing
display a navigation menu of other dy- even a single line of code. This is a very
namic data driven pages.Say you have Note that the ControlID property of powerful and useful control that lets you
created a number of table manipulation the DynamicList is set to the ID of the become much more productive in a mat-
pages for different tables in your database. GridView to use as a template.You can ter of seconds rather than the hours that
Instead of statically linking them in every do this for all other Dynamic controls as used to be taken earlier to do something
page,drop in a Dynamic Navigator control well – DetailsView for Dynamic Details, like this.
on the pages.These will then automatically Hyperlink for Dynamic RSS, Menu for All in all, the Dynamic data controls
list the Dynamic Data pages in your site. Dynamic Navigator and so on. are a huge leap forward in making mun-
dane database manipulation Web pages
Customizing controls Adding Code easier and quicker to create. This is a
You can very easily customize the look and Most of the controls have a number of welcome step in the right direction and
feel of the output from controls by supply- methods that can be used to customize the will be a great addition to the ASP.NET
ing a template to them. For instance, in output even further. For instance, the Dy- stack.

developer agitar one_final.qxp 10/20/2007 7:50 PM Page 92
Developer
Efficient Unit-testing in Java

With AgitarOne developers can now do unit testing of their Java code modules very quickly, and eliminate all
errors effectively
Rahul Sah
DIRECT HIT!
U
nit testing is a practice that de- normal as well as exceptional conditions.
velopers use to test their code AgitarOne relieves the developer by gen-
Applies To: Java developers
modules in isolation to make erating several test-cases for code mod- USP: JUnit generation and code-
sure that each module does what it’s sup- ules, even for those code patterns which rule enforcement
posed to. JUnit is an Open Source frame- developers find tedious to create the JU- Price: $50,000 per year
work which helps in unit testing, nit tests for and normally skip when do- Primary Link: www.agitar.com/
specifically coded on the Java platform. ing the task, manually. products/downloads/
Developers just have to determine the Once a module is put under test cre- Keywords: AgitarOne
test cases and create JUnit tests for their ation,AgitarOne reads through the code,
code modules. creates the test on-the-fly and generates
In a typical setup, developers don’t the report based on the results, observing the packaged version, Tomcat server is au-
prefer this added burden of unit-testing which lines of code were executed and tomatically configured for AgitarOne and
on their shoulders, as they feel that this which lines were excluded.Any anomalies the client machines can access AgitarOne’s
should be done by the testing division. in the code can easily be caught from these Dashboard remotely.
They often overlook the benefits of doing reports. Once the server and clients have been
unit-testing at developmental stage, be- The test values that AgitarOne uses are configured, it’s just a few clicks of process
cause it requires too much work. This based on random generation of values for for developers to automate the unit-test-
used to make it extremely difficult to variables and functions.When any test ing process for their code modules.
convince developers to do unit-testing at fails,AgitarOne reports the sequence of The developer has to select his project
their end. functions and values passed to them so or a class-file and through Agitar’s drop-
Now, there’s a tool that has been in- that a developer may trace through the down menu he can select to create tests,
troduced by Agitar, called Agitar One, code to evaluate the reason why a particu- agitate the code, run the code-rule or gen-
which creates JUnit tests automatically lar code couldn’t handle
for code modules and also prepares the the value, as per expecta-
test cases for them. This significantly re- tion. Like this, quality
duces the time required for unit testing, can be ensured for a
enabling an organization to convince its code module right from
developers to take up the job. the development
process.
AgitarOne steps in
As we mentioned,AgitarOne is a unit- Installation and
testing software for enterprises who are setup
engaged in Java-based development. Pro- AgitarOne is based
ject managers can use it at developmental on Eclipse IDE and it
stage so that their developers can imple- comes packaged with
ment unit-testing. it.Alternatively, it can
It is a server-based model and can ex- also be installed sepa-
ecute through the code modules to test rately as a plug-in to an Agitar’s dashboard gives an overall summary of the project
how the given code will perform under existing Eclipse IDE. In and detailed reports on each class and its risk-analysis

Developer Agitar One_final.qxp 10/20/2007 7:40 PM Page 93
Developer
erate the Dashboard result of the project. listing for the Product class. observation for getName() has also been
modified.
AgitarOne in action 0 <= this.getName().length() <= 46 Similarly, the developer can make as-
The software agitates on a given code As we had defined that a name can’t sessment for other observations. He can
module to check for what that code was be more than 20 characters long, in this assert an observation to hold true for a
intended to do and what it actually does. observation we can see that AgitarOne situation and can again run
Agitation can be described as a process was able to pass more than 20 characters agitation to check the code behavior.
of creating multiple instances of classes, long values to the field ‘name’. This This way a developer, who is well
and calling all methods of those classes means a validation for that is not being familiar with his code, can at develop-
with a wide array of input data and ob- executed or is being ignored by the pro- mental stage only eliminate possible
serving the results thus generated. gram control during execution. redundant errors, by using AgitarOne.
This input data can be randomly Now the developer can directly pre- The functionality of Dashboard is an
generated by AgitarOne or can be manu- sume that the validateName() method of added advantage, both for a developer
ally passed by the developer through fac- the code is not being called when set- and the project leader.As in Dashboard,
tories (user-defined subclasses). Then Name() method passes the value for the whole coverage percentage of the
it’s up to the developer to check which name field. By changing the setName projects’ classes, their progress and the
observation forwarded by AgitarOne is method to look as following code snip- highest risk classes can be viewed.
not matching the desired behavior and pet we can eliminate the error.
the reason for it. Conclusion
For experiencing this agitation public void setName(String name) With the automation of unit-testing, a
process, let us take a sample project pro- throws IllegalArgumentException { developer with the help of AgitarOne can
vided with AgitarOne.We will try validateName(name); implement quality code creation, right
agitating Product class and see the this.name = name; from developmental stage onwards.
observations presented by AgitarOne, so } Hence, enterprises will benefit with
that we are able to assert on a few of When we again agitate the Product reduced time of testing and developers
them to validate code behavior. class, under the Observations view, we will be able to debug their code and
In the Product class, we have valida- see a modified observation listed. The improve productivity, significantly.
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 Upon agitation the coverage style is represented along the editor code lines and
class. Notice the following observation Observations view shows the various observations from the agitation result

Block offensive blogging_final.qxp 10/20/2007 8:57 PM Page 94
Developer
Block Offensive Language from your Site

Using simple PHP code, you can now locate offensive comments posted by anonymous people on your website
or blog, and remove or rename them
Rakesh Sharma
DIRECT HIT!
L
ots of websites nowadays have infor the same is as follows:
corporated interactive features, <?php
Applies To: PHP developers
such as blogs, comments, views, function language_filter($string) { USP: Prevent offensive language
etc. These allow visitors to post their $offensive =
from appearing on your site
comments online.While it’s good to have @file("path/to/your/file/bad_lang.dat"
such features, they can also become a lia- ); Primary Link: www.php.net
bility when users start posting offensive foreach ($offensive as $curse_word) {
or derogatory comments on the website. if Keywords: Language filter
That ultimately affects the website’s repu- (stristr(trim($string),$curse_word)) {
tation. $length = strlen($curse_word);
If you are also struggling to save your for ($i = 1; $i <= $length; $i++) When the string is passed to this
website’s reputation, then here’s a simple { function, the string is parsed and
way out. $stars .= "*"; checked for any offensive word that you
In this article, we provide you a PHP } have specified in the file ‘bad_lang.dat’. It
code snippet that will help you stop $string = takes a word at a time from the string and
banned words from being posted on your ereg_replace($curse_word,$stars,trim($ checks if the word is present in the
website or blog, by anonymous visitors. string)); ‘bad_lang.dat’. If the word is present in
First of all, list down all words in a $stars = ""; the list of offensive words then it simply
text file that you want to ban. Then, write } calculates the length of the word and
down a function ’check_offensive_ } replaces it with a sequence of ‘*’s.
word()’, which will be responsible for return $string; The ‘ereg_replace’ is an in-built func-
checking each word written on your web- } tion in PHP which replaces offensive
site for being an offensive word.The code ?> 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.
The PHP script that you’ll create will check all content on your web page against a This little code will make your web-
banned list you’ve created. Any matches it finds are automatically replaced with a ‘*’ pages a little cleaner.

LINQ.qxp 10/20/2007 6:53 PM Page 76
Developer
Query Style Programming with Orcas

Developers can now apply standard query operators in their programs using LINQ with Visual Studio 2008
(Orcas) to directly access the data objects
Rahul Sah
DIRECT HIT!
M
icrosoft released Visual Stu- syntax checking, rich metadata, and Vi-
dio 2008 (project Orcas) Beta sual Studio’s IntelliSense, which were
Applies To: .NET developers
2 in July this year, which in- earlier available with only .NET code. USP: Programming in query
corporates .NET Framework 3.5. This As LINQ is now part of .NET Frame- style
new framework adds support for new work, it allows for standard query oper- Primary Link: msdn2.microsoft
Web protocols to build WCF (Windows ators to traverse, filter, and update .com/hi-in/vstudio/aa700831.aspx
Communication Foundation) services using any .NET language programming. Keywords: Orcas, LINQ, LINQ to
and also provides support for WPF The standard query operators allow SQL
(Windows Presentation Foundation). queries to be applied to IEnumerable
The other noticeable feature is LINQ, based information source and allow de-
which we will talk about in detail. velopers to use query style syntaxes to SQL translates LINQ-based queries
(LINQ expressions) for their codes re- into SQL database queries. A database-
LINQ and its features ferring to objects or datasets. The stan- specific provider then analyses and
Language Integrated Query, LINQ, al- dard query operators are used for LINQ transforms these into appropriate
lows standard query operations to be to Objects as well, where they can be ap- query language for the data store, for
integrated onto the .NET platform so as plied to all in-memory information. example, Microsoft SQL Server. Let’s see
to provide a unified way to query across The power of LINQ is in its extensibil- how LINQ can be used over Objects in
objects, database, and XML in a stan- ity. LINQ can provide implementations projects and also over SQL for a data-
dard way. LINQ offers compile-time that work over SQL data sources. LINQ base reference.
LINQ to Objects
LINQ 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 LinqDemo example lists the file information in directory ‘E:/docs’ upon execution the Form1 will show the code window,
of application where on Form Load event we will

LINQ.qxp 10/20/2007 6:53 PM Page 77
Developer
first try retrieving the file information have the list of files along with the in- on and manipulate the objects while
of the directory E:/docs. Using LINQ, formation listed in the DataGridView. LINQ to SQL working in the back-
we will now write code in query format With this we show how LINQ over ob- ground tracks the changes and reflects
to retrieve the file information. The fol- jects in memory is used and how cod- them onto the database.
lowing code snippet does the same; the ing has become easier for the Let’s create a new VB project in Vi-
file info will be retrieved for the direc- developers with the standard query op- sual Studio 2008 to see how LINQ to SQL
tory and stored in ‘files’ variable. erators traversing and retrieving over works. For this create a new Windows
list of objects Form Application project and name it as
Dim files = From file In ‘Linq2SqlDemo.’ For LINQ to SQL we
My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles("E:\ LINQ to SQL have objects mapped to database enti-
docs") Order By file Select file We have seen how standard query op- ties. These objects can be simple busi-
erators can be used to access in-mem- ness classes having attributes that
The variable ‘files’ would contain ory objects for a .NET project using correspond to columns in the database.
IEnumerable of String objects. The LINQ. Now LINQ to SQL is also a com- But with Visual Studio 2008, we can use
compiler automatically gets to know ponent of Visual Studio 2008. It pro- O-R Designer to create these objects that
the type of result the query would re- vides a platform for managing map to the database. To do this first we
turn. And the variable is automatically relational data as objects coupled with need to add LINQ to SQL classes tem-
type-casted according to returned re- the ability to use query. In LINQ to plate to the project, which is done by
sult, thus variable would be having all SQL, the data model of a relational right-clicking the project name on the
the file names from the directory. Once database is mapped to a developer-de- Solution Explorer window and selecting
we have the file names, we would now fined object model. When this is exe- the Add > New Item option. On the Add
display file information on DataGrid- cuted, LINQ to SQL translates the New Item window name it as
View as a list. For this we will again use language-integrated queries into SQL PcqDemo.dbml. On clicking ‘OK’ the ob-
FileSystem to get the file information. for execution by the database, and then ject relation designer opens up. Through
With GetFileInfo of FileSystem we get returns the results to the defined ob- the Server Explorer window, select an
all the attributes related to a file, like jects. This provides an ability to work SQL Server database. For this we have a
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()
Select the ‘User’ object, mapped to the table User, in database to set it as the data-
Now, on running the project we can source for the project

LINQ.qxp 10/20/2007 6:53 PM Page 78
Developer
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
O-R Designer creates the User object and names the DataContext for Database as
at compile time gets translated to SQL
PcqDemoDataContext, as shown in Properties window
query so that the database can execute it
demo database added to the Data Con- the code that will fetch the list from the and return the result of the query in an
nections. For displaying the list of users Users table and display it on the Binding object-defined form. The LINQ feature is
from the table ‘Users,’ drag-drop the table Navigator. For this get access to Data easy to start up with, and the LINQ to SQL
from the data connection onto the O-R Context, which in our case is PcqDemo- feature enables the developer to do com-
Designer. This creates ‘Users’ object corre- DataContext, and we can declare that mon database-related tasks with ease and
sponding to the table ‘Users’ with each globally as follows: reduces their work on coding.
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
On Execution
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 Dragging DataSource User onto Form creates its BindingSource and its Navigator,
container. On the Form load event write the result shows the User list ordered by attribute username

book contest_nov'07.qxp 10/20/2007 5:51 PM Page 78
Contest
ASP.NET 2.0 Visual Web Developer 2005
Authors: David Sussman, Alex Homer
C reating interactive Web applications is a tedious task

and this book aims at simplifying that. Written in an
interactive yet simple manner this book focuses more on
Price: Rs 329
Pages: 295
Distributor: Wiley India, Delhi
speeding up the development process, and making a site more Ph: 23260877
accessible as well as dependable. Instead of wasting more Email: csupport@wileyindia.com
time on theory and concepts, the emphasis is given more on
SMS Buy 131041 to 56767
the practical problems that are very well explained using real
life scenarios. There are step-by-step tutorials and appropri-
ate screenshots for guiding even a novice Web developer. This
book gives an idea starting from the basics such as installing CD containing all the tools and examples you need with Mi-
Visual Web Developer to design tips for building dependable crosoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and the
and accessible sites. After reading this book one can learn how MSDN 2005 Express Edition library. If you are a novice devel-
to display and edit data, the number of ways to publish a fin- oper or migrating from ASP or PHP technologies for website
ished site or building a shopping cart. It comes bundled with a development, then this book is meant for you.
Java Script For Web Developers Author: Nicholas C. Zakas

Price: Rs 549
Pages: 646
T his book is meant for assisting Web developers in im-
proving the usability of their websites and Web
applications by optimally harnessing the potential of
Distributor: Wiley India, Delhi
Ph: 23260877
Java language. It is writen in a simple yet effective man- Email: csupport@wileyindia.com
ner, and provides a solid understanding of the
SMS Buy 131042 to 56767
language's concepts and structure. It provides solutions
to real problems that a developer is likely to face while
trying to deploy their application in a diverse environment OOPS techniques, the DOM, regular expressions and events,
such as the Internet and all the different browsers used to nav- form validation, browser detection, image roll-overs, sorting
igate it. tables, error handling and XMLhandling. This book also
Basically all that is required for having a good hand on the discusses techniques for handling events and validating data,
practical implementation of JavaScript, it covers all. Topics and security issues, optimization, and intellectual property
that it covers include concepts such as ECMAScript basics, in details.
Books Contest November 2007

Here’s your chance to win one of these books.Answer the questions below and send them to pcquest@cy-
bermedia.co.in with the subject ‘Books Contest November 2007’. Do include your full name, designation,
company name,mailing address and telephone number.Results will be announced on forums.pcquest.com
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Which of these are used in ASP scripts as delimiters? What is the extension for a Java script file?
❐ <%>...</%> ❐ <%...%> ❐ AS ❐ JS
❐<script>...</script> ❐ <&>...</&> ❐ PS ❐ DS

hands on The Ultimate Boot CD_final.qxp 10/24/2007 2:19 AM Page 90
Hands on
The Ultimate Boot CD

Create a Windows based Live CD using this free utility, which lets you add an ample number of recovery and
rescue tools for safeguarding and maintaining your Windows based machines
Vijay Chauhan
Y
ou must have heard of Linux called Ultimate Boot CD and a genuine
Live CDs. We use them for dif- copy of Windows Installer CD.
DIRECT HIT!
ferent purposes, such as rescue, This tool has more than 50 freeware Applies To: Desktop users
recovery, antivirus scanning etc, in utilities (plug-ins), like antivirus, file re- Price: Free
Linux environment. Let’s now try to covery, networking tools, CD burning USP: Survive virus attacks,
build a Live CD for Windows with similar software, MBR backup and many others. do easy repair and recovery
tools that may help you in recovering You can download UBCD for free and then of files and utilities
your Windows machine from viruses/ install it by running its simple setup
Primary Link:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/
hacker attacks, system failures or miss- process. Once that is done, you are ready
Google Keyword: Media con-
configurations. That is quite possible and to write your own boot CD, that is nothing
vertor
all you need is a piece of free software short of being the ultimate.
1 2
Define the Source of Windows recovery files and name of Say, we want to put AVG Antivirus as a plug-in. For that, it will
the Output folder. Plugins are used to enable or disable any give us two options. Either we can take our installed antivirus to
in-built utility. the CD or can directly take the latest version from the Internet.
3 4
The entire updated AVG antivirus is downloaded for its inclu- Now, by using Build, you can build the ISO image of the boot CD.
sion in our boot CD. Once the download is complete, you just This is how it reports, when you press the Build button. Once that
have to enable the service by clicking Enable. is done, you are ready to burn the CD.

Hands on Corel Photopaint.qxp 10/23/2007 2:21 PM Page 90
Hands on
Masking with Corel Photo-Paint

Masking is a vital task when compositing an image. Designers usually spend a lot of time selecting an object
and pasting it on another image.We tell you how to do this using Corel Photo-Paint
Jose PM
C
orel Photo-Paint is a high-qual- mode selects an area in an image, ‘Addi-
ity image enhancer and image tive’ expands the editable regions by
DIRECT HIT!
manipulation program. It is a selecting multiple areas, ‘Subtractive’ Applies To: Designers
companion application of CorelDraw removes areas from a selection, and Price: $379
X3 graphics suite, designed specifically ‘XOR’ selects multiple areas. USP: Corel Photo-Paint lets
for image editing. It includes new Image Here we used Magic wand mask tool you select objects in just a few
Adjustment Lab that enables you to as the background color is uniform. steps
evaluate different color tonal correction When you click anywhere on the image Primary Link: www. Corel.com
settings for enhancing your photos. the tool takes the value of the first pixel Google Keyword: Masking
In Photo-Paint there are four mask and expands the selected area to include Photo-Paint
modes available for selection. ‘Normal’ all surrounding pixels of similar value.
1 2
Open a new file and choose a desired background. Paste the Click on background and a red overlay appears on the object
image you want to mask and select Magic Wand Tool. Set tol- and some parts of the background. For deselecting unneces-
erance value as 5 and select anti-alias and Additive mode sary overlay on the background just click on the areas
3 4
For removing the unmasked area go to Edit >Cut and now For fine tuning, like removing the blur as highlighted, go to Ob-
you can see the selected background. With this we get the ject >Defringe and set value of Defringe in the range of 1--5.
complete picture Your mask is now ready for use

hands on parallels compressor workstation.qxp 10/22/2007 9:35 PM Page 1
Hands on
OptimizeYour Virtual Machines

Use Parallels Compression Server to improve the performance of your virtual machines by cleaning their
hard disks of unwanted clutter
Swapnil Arora
V
irtual machines have become ubiquitous and are being
used for various purposes ranging from running mission
DIRECT HIT!
critical applications to testing. With time and usage, the Applies To: IT managers
size of virtual machine starts increasing and then comes the prob-
lem of increasing the size of its hard disk. This problem can be Price: $179
solved by using Parallels Compressor Server—a disk
USP: Compress virtual disks of VM
management tool, which can reduce the size of virtual disks and
clean unnecessary files present on the virtual disk. It can be used
Primary Link: http://www.parallels.com
on virtual machines created in VMware Workstation, VMware
GSX server, Microsoft Virtual Server and PC, and ‘Parallels Work- Google Keywords: Virtual machine compression
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 with its installation then you will find a ParallelsCompressor.iso
install it on the host operating system. This is because then this image file on the location where you’ve installed the software.
tool can be used by all virtual machines running on the host OS. Now, go to the settings of the virtual machine that you want to
One can install it on Windows 2003, 2000, XP, 2003 x64, XP compress, and in its CD/DVD option specify this image file. To do
x64, and major flavors of Linux. However, if you are this in VMware workstation, go to ‘Virtual Machine Settings’ op-
installing it on the guest OS then it only supports Windows. tion and select CD-ROM. Now choose the ‘ISO image’ option and
click on ‘Browse’ button to specify the location of the ISO image.
How to use? This image will be visible in virtual machine’s CD/DVD-ROM
Installing this management tool is simple. Once you’re through 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
Parallel compressor lets you decide which tasks should be execu- the process is resumed, a pop up message will ask if you want to
ted at the time of compression & choose the level of compression continue. Click on ‘Yes to continue,’ and you’re done.

hands on parallels compressor workstation.qxp 10/22/2007 9:35 PM Page 2
2 PCQUEST J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

hands on-blocking unwanted spam with vista_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:46 PM Page 90
Hands on
Spam Busting in Windows Vista

Is sorting spam mails from legitimate ones consuming your valuable time? Windows mail in Vista blocks
spam and moves it to a junk folder, and even lets you create your own black and white lists. Here’s how
Sanjay Majumder
S
pam has become a major concern a mail client that is designed to protect
and many a times, there’s more of users from bulk spam mail. Here we
DIRECT HIT!
spam than legitimate mail com- will show you how to configure Win- Applies To: Vista users
ing into a user’s mailbox. Sorting and dows Mail in Vista to block incoming USP: Configure Windows Mail
deleting all this spam from the inbox spam. Vista Windows mail also comes in Vista to combat spam and
takes a toll on productive time. To evade with an option that detects phishing phishing attacks
spam, there are plenty of paid and free mails and protects users from getting Primary link: http://support.
anti-spam software available. ‘phished.’ You can even define your microsoft.com/ph/11732
But if you are using Vista on your own list of banned email IDs, in case Google Keyword: Spam preven-
desktop or laptop then you don’t have to Vista is not able to detect spam coming tion in Vista
go for third party software. It offers you in from them.
1 2
Open Windows Mail, configure your account, click on ‘Tools’ To block phishing attacks, configure Windows Mail by clicking
and junk email options. Select the level of protection: No Au- Tools> Junk e-mail options. Select ‘phishing’ and tick ‘Protect
tomatic Filtering, Low, High, and Safe List Only My Inbox from messages with potential Phishing Links’
3 4
Sometimes, legitimate mails get blocked and sent to junk To set a block list of your own from Junk mail option go to Block
folder. To avoid this right-click on the legitimate mail and se- Senders tab and add all the email IDs that you want to block on
lect junk E-Mail>add Sender to Safe Senders’ list your Windows mail

Hands on - Firekeeper_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:30 PM Page 2
Hands on
Add More Fire to Your FireFox

Firekeeper scans all incoming traffic to your Firefox browser and uses rules to detect browse- based attacks,
hence, providing an additional layer of security
Swapnil Arora
F
irekeeper is an add-on IDS/IPS for Mozilla Firefox browser,
which detects, warns and blocks malicious websites. It scans
DIRECT HIT!
all incoming traffic including URLs, headers, and body of a Applies To: Firefox users
webpage to detect browser-based attacks. For compressed,
encrypted or secure traffic (i.e. HTTPS), it scans after decompress- Price: Free
ing or decrypting it. Firekeeper scans HTTP traffic and tries to look USP: Harden Firefox against browser based
for patterns of browser based attacks against a set of rules. The attacks
rules for malwares and exploits are set by default, and you can also
Primary Link: http://firekeeper.mozdev.org/
easily create custom rules for detecting threats as well. They are
based on the well-known IDS, Snort. Whenever a threat is Google Keywords: Firekeeper, browser-based
detected, Firekeeper displays its full description like its URL, and IDS/IPS
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 blocks all traffic without any user intervention, and ‘alert’ gener-
firekeeper.xpi from the URL mentioned in the Direct Hit box, and ates an Alert window.
Firefox will automatically install it. After installation restart the The Rule options describe what should trigger an action and
browser, and you can see the icon for Firekeeper on the extreme other information about the rule. There are three choices: url_con-
right corner of the status bar. Now, as you surf the Web and a web- tent, headers_content, and body_content. Creating a rule is sim-
site attacks your machine, this add-on will immediately display an ple. open a text file and write
alert and prompt you to take action. You can take any of the four
actions: blacklist, white list, block once and allow once. alert(msg: attack detected body_content:"clsid|3A"; nocase;)
Firekeeper rules are made of two parts: Rule header and Rule In the body_content tag specify the content that you want to
options. The header defines three actions that can be taken when- scan in the incoming traffic, and in the msg tag define the message
ever a rule match is detected: pass, drop, and alert. Whenever a that should be displayed when such content is detected. nocase tag
‘pass’ action rule match occurs, it allows processing of HTTP traf- signifies that the content specified in the body_content tag will be
fic without going for any further checks. Likewise, ‘drop’ action searched without any arguments.
Whenever the traffic matches a rule, a pop-up window is After a threat is detected, you can view the Triggered rule and
displayed and user is asked to choose an action to take response HTTP headers of the URL in hex or text modes

hands on httprint.qxp 10/22/2007 9:39 PM Page 90
Hands on
HTTP Fingerprinting Simplified

With latest version of httprint tool, you can collect as well as analyze signatures of Web servers, detect changes
in Web servers, and also perform Web server inventory
Swapnil Arora
h
ttprint is a Web server fingerprint- various details about SSL certificates
ing tool that identifies the type of such as who is the issuer, issue date,
DIRECT HIT!
the running HTTP server, and also certificate’s expiry date etc. Its signa- Applies To: Pen testers, IT
detects whether a Web server is obfuscated tures database is in a text file, and these managers
using a third party software or not. It uses signatures are used to analyze the sig- Price: Free
natures that the scanned Web server
USP: Identification of Web
the HTTP fingerprinting technique that is
servers
quite popular amongst pen testers. One can generates. You can also customize its
Primary Link: http://www.net-
use it for Web server inventory and detect- signature database. It lets you import square.com/httprint/index.shtml
ing Web enabled devices. Web server’s details from an nmap scan Google Keyword: Web server
This tool supports automatic SSL and can be installed on all versions of fingerprinting
detection and analysis. You can gather Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
1 2
Below ‘Host’ option provide the name & port no of the Web Once the scanning is done, you can view the banner reported
server. To add more hosts, right click and choose ‘Add new’ by the Web server and banner deduced by the http print. A
option. Click on Start to begin the scanning process difference between the two implies obfuscation
3 4
After selecting the detected Web server, you can see the http httprint also generates a detailed report of the scan performed.
signature returned from the server and also the OS on which In the screenshot above, you can see a detailed SSL analysis
the Web server is running done by httprint tool

hands on big board -- linux online aware taskbar.qxp 10/23/2007 3:16 PM Page 1
Hands on
Linux Online Aware Taskbar

A one-click solution for all your online and desktop applications, replacing the current side panel from
GNOME desktops
Rakesh Sharma
W
ith Linux for desktops gaining momentum
amongst the masses, the need of going online is
DIRECT HIT!
increasing. BigBoard, a built-in feature in the up- Applies To: Gnome users
coming Fedora 8, is meant for online and desktop apps and
Price: Free
further gets integrated with Google and Mugshot. It is an on-
line panel which at present can only be incorporated with USP: Online desktop sidebar for Fedora 8
Linux GNOME desktops. It is considered as a replacement of
the current working panels as it provides access to the in- Primary Link: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/
stalled application in categorized form, shows online friends Releases/FeatureOnlineDesktop
and photos, and the daily schedule. Here we show how to in-
Google Keywords: BigBoard Linux
stall and configure it for your needs.
Installation
Copy the following installation files from ‘PCQ Professional some dependencies for BigBoard. But if you already have these
CD’ onto your PC: dependencies installed, the first three commands need not be
run. Execute the following commands to install:
1. bigboard-0.5.5-1.fc7.i386.rpm
2. hippo-canvas-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm #rpm -ivh hippo-canvas-python-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm
3. hippo-canvas-python-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm #rpm -ivh hippo-canvas-0.2.24-1.fc7.i386.rpm
4. mugshot-1.1.55-1.fc7.i386.rpm #rpm -ivh mugshot-1.1.55-1.fc7.i386.rpm
#rpm -ivh bigboard-0.5.5-1.fc7.i386.rpm
Before installing BigBoard on Fedora 7 you need to install
Starting Up
After 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
Bigboard’s panel depicting the recently used apps and the use and provides a search option which helps you find multi-
schedule getting updated with the online integrated apps ple elements within your desktop and Internet.

hands on imple animation.qxp 10/22/2007 9:45 PM Page 90
Hands on
Add Liveliness to Your Web Pages

Lively animated images add on to the visual appeal of Web content.You can use Photoshop for creating such
images in a few easy steps
Jose PM
I
f you think Photoshop is only meant ing an animated page and spend a lot of
for retouching photographs, color time to figure out how their graphic
DIRECT HIT!
correction or image manipulation, would look on website. Using CS3, de- Applies To: Web designers
then think again. One can even create signers can also preview how their file USP: No more toggling b/w
small animations for the Web by using will look on Web, how large its size is and different animation programs.
Photoshop CS3 to make Web pages look how much time will it take to download. You can upload your animations
more colorful and accessible. Using CS3, This will help them take quick decisions directly on Web
one can create frame based animations as to how they want their artwork to ap- Primary Link: www.adobe.com
by modifying image layers to show pear on the Web. Here, in this article Google Keyword: Pulsating
movement. Normally, Web designers use we’ll show you how to create an anima- animation
specialized software programs for creat- tion for a submarine going under sea.
1 2
Open image of a submarine in Photoshop, press Ctrl+A to Use the ‘Pen’ tool to make a path for the submarine image. To
select the image, and paste it onto a new layer. Keep the save this path, select the ‘Path’ option from the Windows menu,
background layer visibility off double click on the ‘Work Path’ option and define it
3 4
Now, select the path that you defined in the previous step, Save this image in a separate file, and the area from where the
and click on ‘Make selection’ option. In the window that pops image is cut will be either white or transparent. Fill that area
up, define Feather radius as 0.5 pixels, and cut submarine with sky and ocean

hands on imple animation.qxp 10/22/2007 9:46 PM Page 91
Hands on
5 6
You can use the ‘Brush’ or ‘Healing Brush’ tool to fill that area Select layer one, chose path 1 from the Path window, make a
with sky and ocean. Select and copy the new background, selection and paste submarine inside the selection using the
and paste it onto multiple layers ‘Paste into’ option present under the Edit menu
7 8
Go to layer 2, use ‘Paste into’ option and move the submarine Under the Windows menu, select the ‘Animation’ option and
image a bit using the arrow key, and merge the new layer with add new frames. Select layer 1 as first frame, layer 2 as
layer 2. Repeat this step for all layers second frame and so on
9 10
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

StExBar.qxp 10/22/2007 9:47 PM Page 2
Hands on
Using Explorer as Shell

Enhance the functionality of your Windows Explorer by adding custom commands through a small and
simple tool called ‘StExBar’
Rakesh Sharma
I
magine how simple your work would become if MS DOS
prompt is incorporated into Windows Explorer. Also, how
DIRECT HIT!
fast and easy things would turn if Windows Explorer is
Applies To: End users
customized according to one’s need. StExBar is a tool that ful-
fills all the requirements by incorporating MS-DOS features Price: Free
into Windows Explorer.
Here we show how StExBar can be installed to put addi- USP: Ease up your daily work
tional functionality to Windows Explorer by adding custom
commands. Installing this tool is pretty simple: Primary Link: tools.tortoisesvn.net/StExBar
just download the ‘dll’ file that is approximately 157 KB from
Google Keywords: StExBar
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 on the toolbar and select ‘StExBar.’ This tool requires Windows
button. The ‘regsvr32.exe’ is a process within Windows XP or a higher to get work. It is also provided with an option of
that is used to register the ‘dll’ and ActiveX control to the adding custom commands to ease your work.
registry.
After the installation, open Windows Explorer, right click Adding custom commands
Click 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
With the rename option in StExBar, you can select as many
we have just created on the ‘StExBar’ bar. The file opens up in
no. of files and change extensions as you want in one go
notepad.

diy_ms compute cluster deployment_final.qxp 10/24/2007 5:57 PM Page 110
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Running Linpack onWin Compute Cluster

SERIES Are clusters and number crunching machines a part of your fantasy world? With this series,we’ll take
CB
PART I you through a journey of how to build and benchmark your own MS Compute cluster using Linpack
Anindya Roy
why this time, we decided to build a much top500.org for benchmarking world’s
W
e first talked about
Microsoft’s Compute Cluster bigger cluster of 15 nodes, with each best 500 supercomputers.
Suite in April last year. Lots of node having a dual core CPU (plus one
things have changed since then in the head node) using the MSCCS SP1 and The Setup
world of HPC, and likewise, the Cluster then test it with some standard industry MS CCS doesn’t work on 32-bit architec-
Suite has also undergone many changes. benchmarks. ture, but you can install either the Head
At that time, we had just three 64-bit ma- We’ll first talk about how to build such or the Client node on a 32-bit machine.
chines in our labs and we used all of them a cluster, and then we’ll discuss how to port The 15 nodes that we used for setting up
to create the MS Compute Cluster. The in- High Performance Linpack(HPL) to Win- MSCCS had an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz
terface was so difficult that we were not dows and then finally run it on all the processor and 512 MB RAM. For the head
even able to create a test MPI (Message nodes in a distributed manner to see what node, we took a Dual Xeon processor ma-
passing interface) job and submit to the kind of performance it’s able to deliver. chine with one GB RAM. The 15 nodes
cluster properly. But of course that was Linpack is a benchmark that meas- were meant to process the computing
the first public beta of MS CCS and it was ures floating point operations (FLOPS) jobs, whereas the Head node managed
a bit too much to expect full blown func- and comes in different variants. One such jobs and the whole cluster.
tionality from it. variant of Linpack is HPL or High Perfor- To interconnect the cluster we’ve
Today we have the new Compute mance Linpack. It is an industry standard used a Gigabit Ethernet network. All
Cluster Suite SP1, and also have twenty benchmark for measuring performance nodes of course, had Gigabit Ethernet
64-bit machines at our disposal. That’s of supercomputers and has been used by 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 Node

The 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
While installing Microsoft Compute Cluster Pack, you will see this screen. Select the be used for creating the Head node as well
first option to use a node as the Head node as the Compute nodes. After

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installing the Head node, create an
isolated domain for the cluster. Wanna be part of this series ?
If you still have another domain What we plan is to do a comparative shootout of commodity clustering architecture in
controller on this network, then you can the series, where we will benchmark all the clustering solutions one after the other each
create the head node as an additional do- month on similar set of physical hardware. At the end of the series we will compile a
full-fledged summary: which is the best clustering solution and will cover all the as-
main controller. We created an isolated
pects such as usability, support, performance, cost, etc. But that’s a long way to go
domain controller for our setup. For this
and right now we can’t be sure where will this story head, because of the requirement
we ran the dcpromo command and fol-
of huge amount of resources , time and skilled manpower. So, we are looking out for
lowed the dcpromo wizard. Just make
contributors who can help us in this story. For more discussion on the topic we’ve al-
sure that while creating the domain you ready started a post on our forums. You can also join in and discuss at http://forums.pc-
also install and create a local DNS server quest.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6148.
on the Head node. This will help you
when you deploy MS CCS. and Cluster Administration (used to trator. Under the ’To do List‘ pane, select
Now, install the DHCP server on this configure cluster and cluster nodes). the ‘Configure Compute Cluster Topol-
machine so that the remote deployment ogy’ option.
server can work properly. (Configuration Configuring the Cluster This will open up the wizard. From
of DHCP server is out of the scope of this This process involves three major tasks: the drop down menu select ’Compute
article and we are assuming that you 1. Configuring the network topology Nodes Isolated on Private Network‘ and
have the basic knowhow of how to con- 2. Installing and adding nodes proceed to the next step.
figure basic services like DHCP on a Win- 3. User management Further the wizard will ask you to se-
dows Server 2003). One word of caution- Since, ours is a test cluster we won’t lect the network cards which are con-
if you are planning to provide an Internet give much emphasis to the users manage- nected to the public and private network
connection to your cluster (which is a ment part, rather we will focus on config- one by one. Select the right option and
good idea as you will get regular updates uring the network and nodes now. then click on Finish. After this, disable the
and downloads easily), then configure it firewall, which is recommended consid-
using Windows Internet Connection Configure the Network ering the fact that ours is a test setup.
Sharing and not with Remote Access To configure the cluster, go to Program For this, click on the ‘Manage Win-
Server (RAS). I am not sure about the files>Microsoft Compute Cluster Pack> dows Firewall Settings’ option, which will
reason but MSCCS recommends ICS in- and start the Compute Cluster Adminis- open up the standard Firewall manager
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 This is the ‘admin’ window of Compute Cluster Pack. All the installation and manage-
submitting and managing cluster jobs) ment tasks happen from this single interface

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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-
This is the place where you configure network topology of your cluster.The next
tion; else you won’t be able to install Win-
likely option will be ‘Compute node loaded’
dows 2003. Provide a name to the folder
such as RemoteInstall and then proceed. building process starts. This process Adding Nodes
Further the wizard will ask you about the will take around 10 to 15 minutes for Till now, only the OS has been installed on
location of the CD, whose Image you have completion. the Compute nodes. To make the whole
to create for remote installation. Place the Once it is done, your RIS is ready and setup work properly, you have to install a
Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster now you can turn on and boot all your few more components. For this, go to each
edition CD in the CD drive of the Head node Compute nodes over the network to start node one by one, uncheck ‘create the
and specify the drive letter in this wizard. an un-attended remote installation. This machine a Head node’ option and run the
Click on ‘Next’ and proceed till the process is quite simple, so we won’t discuss Compute Cluster Pack on them. This will
wizard gets completed and the image its details. 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
s 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
In the ‘Compute Cluster Administrator’ window, you can check the status of the nodes. FQDN will be something like Node00x,
To check the exact resource utilization of any node, use the System Monitor option where x is the number of the node.

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Porting Linpack for Windows of the nodes of your MS Compute Cluster. To begin with, first create a folder
Compute Cluster The compiler is to be installed on one of the called “scratch” at C:\ of the node where
Here, we will see how one can port (re- nodes because it ensures that you are com- you have installed all the above mentioned
compile) Linpack source in Windows and piling your application on the right hard- components. Then go to the folders where
then run it on Windows Compute Cluster ware architecture and as a result you’ll get you have installed ACML and MKL.
Environment. We tried it and used it for better performance. By default they will be in the Program
benchmarking our created Microsoft After this, download both the AMD Files folder if you did not give any other
Compute Cluster. But we faced a problem. and Intel’s Math Kernel libraries. Down- path. Go to the AMD folder first and
Basically, Linpack is an application used load and install the file called ‘acml3.5.0- rename the ACML3.5.X file as
majorly for testing Linux based clusters 64-win64’ from http://tinyurl.com/ ACML3.0.0. Similarly, go to the Intel’s
and trust me, porting it to run on MSCCS 2k6tny. Also download and install the In- folder and rename 9.1.x as 8.0.1. So, the
was not at all a child’s play. tel’s Math Kernel library use the following hacking part is done and we are ready to
In this article, we will see how with the link: http://tinyurl.com/2p9m8f. work on the actual file.
help of some tools and libraries, you can Now install the MS Compute Cluster
recompile the HPL source files in your SDK from http://tinyurl.com/3yjyg9. Just Compiling Linpack
Windows architecture and run it on the make sure that you download and install Now download the latest version of HPL
top of MSCCS. the 64-bit version. Now the installation is from http://tinyurl.com/2mopw8. Unzip
done but for Linpack to work properly it in a way that the HPL folder comes
Prerequisites you’ll have to perform some nasty tricks. under the C:\scratch folder.
The list of prerequisite SDKs and libraries This is because the makefile that we are In Linux, Linpack uses the make com-
is too long, but the first thing that you need going to use for compiling Linpack had a mand for compilation. But the makefiles
is MS Visual Studio 2005. Install it on any lots of path names hardcoded. 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-
In MSCCS you can execute a task directly through the command prompt by running the nized by our mpiexec command that
mpiexec command. To submit a task you’ve to go through the Task Properties window finally you have to use for running Lin-

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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 XHPL
To 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
Applications built using Visual Studio with Manifest option enabled, can’t be run using
provide a descriptive job name and go to
MS CCS.Therefore, disable that option before you compile Linpack
the Processors tab. Then select the number
of processors that you want to use from you are going to run (which Linpack is) directory is essentially the shared location
your cluster to process your job. Remem- then the command will be something like where the xhpl.exe sits and it should look
ber, the number you provide should be ’mpiexec xhpl.exe’. To add tasks click on something like Error! Hyperlink reference
equal to the number of cores and not the the Add button. Tasks that have been not valid.
number of physical processors. added will get listed under the task list. The output file can be any file where
Now go to the Tasks tab and in the Select the task and click on the Edit button. you want to get the output of Linpack. By
Command line field, type in the command Here, provide the working directory, and default it is hpl.out. The input file is of
you want to run. If it’s an MPI process that input and output file name. The working 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
Once you have submitted the job, you can then view the status of the job under the Job the article hosted at
Monitor window http://tinyurl.com/23q98y.

Review - MojoPac_final.qxp 10/23/2007 1:14 PM Page 116
Reviews
MojoPac Desktop Virtualization Software

Install MojoPac on your iPod, mobile phone or portable USB HDD to carry personal applications, settings and
data and transform any Windows XP based computer into your personal computer
Rahul Sah
N
otebooks are a boon for travellers. They give you the mo-
bility and freedom to carry all your data, applications, etc Price: $49.99 (1 license)
wherever you travel. Have you ever wished that you could Meant For: Mobile executives
carry the same data and applications without really lugging a lap-
Key Specs: Supports Win XP based PCs, USB
top around with you? Maybe instead of a laptop, carry a small de- 2.0 storage devices
vice that fits in your shirt’s pocket? Well, that’s exactly what Pros: Complete access to host resources; isolates
RingCube Technologies has introduced. It’s a desktop virtualiza- working environment from host PC
tion software called MojoPac. It can be installed on any USB stor- Cons: No security features
age device and used to capture personal settings, configurations,
Contact: RingCube Technologies
applications and data files from your personal computer. By con- Tel: 9945031390 Email: faheem@ringcube.com
necting a MojoPac installed device to any Win XP based PC, you
SMS Buy 131181 to 56767
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 files and folders from the host PC to the portable device. So, effec-
USB 2.0 compliant device, be it an iPod, mobile phone, pen drive tively, the device having MojoPac is the real PC having all applica-
or portable HDD. Once MojoPac has been installed, you can log on tions and settings while the computer to which it is attached is just
to the MojoPac desktop that runs from the portable device. It con- a utility to run MojoPac. You can install applications on the
verts your portable device into your ‘C’ drive where applications portable device and access them from any PC, anywhere. Most of
can be loaded and data files copied. It also provides the facility to the regular applications can be installed, be they for business, de-
transfer your Mozilla and IE settings such as bookmarks, Home velopers, editing tools or games. MojoPac allows full access to the
page, etc through a Data Copy. This allows you to have your own host PC’s resources like printers, network, CD/DVD drive and at-
personal bookmarks and browsing settings when using MojoPac tached peripherals. It provides complete isolation from the host PC,
on a host PC. The ‘Data Copy’ option can also be used to transfer 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 their

Shown here is the Mojopac desktop on the host PC. You can personal settings and applications around, and that too in
freely use all your personal settings and applications a device that fits into their pocket.

review - gnome 2.20_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:32 AM Page 120
Preview
GNOME 2.20
Support for EXIF digital cameras, a new user profiles editor, and a few thoughtful features in the Evolution
mail client are a few of the highlights in the latest desktop environment for linux. Here’s a sneak peak.
Anindya Roy
G
ENOME 2.20 is out and has already been incorporated in
two most popular Linux distros---Mandriva 2008 and Price: N/A
OpenSuSE 10.3. However, it’s not yet out as standard RPM Meant For: Linux Users
or deb files for installation or upgrade on older distros. So, if you
Key Specs: New Evolution client; EXIF information
don’t want to install Mandriva or OpenSuSE, you can still check support for digital cameras; New User Profile
out the new GNOME. Simply download Foresight Linux from Editor
http://torrent.GNOME.org/, which is essentially a Live CD devel- Pros: Has incorporated some very thoughtful new
oped by GNOME developers. Here’s a sneak preview of the popu- features
lar desktop GUI. Cons: None
Contact: http://torrent.GNOME.org/
Intuitive new features SMS Buy 131183 to 56767
If 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 age file format that incorporates specific metadata into JPEG or Tiff
this nifty feature that is always on the lookout for words such as files, which when copied to a computer, tell you the orientation of
attachment, attach, etc whenever you type a mail. In case it finds an image. So, your GNOME File Manager will automatically dis-
a match, it warns you about the possibility of a mail attachment cover portrait and landscape images while being transferred from
and requests you to confirm the same before you send the mail. the EXIF enabled camera to the PC and do the needful changes to
Of course, there is no great technology behind this but it’s really their orientation.
useful to have. Plus, you will also see a task bar icon of evolution GENOME has another interesting feature that doesn’t involve
in GNOME 2.20. any rocket science, but is thoughtful nonetheless. GNOME’s
GNOME is clever enough to understand the EXIF information ‘Locked Screen’ dialog has a button called ‘Leave a note’ where vis-
from new age cameras. EXIF or Exchangeable Image File is an im- itors can drop in a note in your absence. You don’t need sticky notes
anymore thanks to this feature.
User profiles
A 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-

If you type attach while composing a mail in Evolution, tures, some of which are so simple, and yet one wonders
without actually attaching a file, it pops up a warning why didn’t anybody think of them before.

reviews_netop remote control fulpage_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:25 AM Page 122
Reviews
NetOp Remote Control 9.0

If you have a heterogenous network and are looking for a solution to remotely manage all the hosts on it, then
check out this solution. It lets you gain complete control over remote hosts over an encrypted link
Rahul Sah
N
etOp Remote Control (RC) is a software to help organ-
Price: $183 (per Host) and $183 (per Guest)
izations remotely manage hosts on their network.
Meant For: IT managers
The key highlight of this software is that it let’s you
Key Specs: File transfer between a host and a
control machines on different platforms, which include Win- guest, guest ID authentication, transfer keyboard
dows, Linux, Mac, and Solaris. The software has two compo- and mouse controls to host
nents, a Host and Guest. An administrator would use the Guest Pros: Multiple platform support, data packet
encryption
component to connect to a Host computer to remotely access
Cons: No file transfer between Linux guest and
and control it. Windows host
By using RC, a Guest can have full control of the remote Contact: M3 Idea Solutions–NetOp India,
Coimbatore, Tel: 2440402, E-mail: om@netopin-
machine, including the authority to even Shutdown, Lock, or dia.com
restart it. In addition to remote control, RC also provides file- SMS Buy 131184 to 56767
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- Linux, Solaris or Mac platforms.
forms, and for Linux, Solaris and Mac, it provides remote con- The installation and setup of Host and the Guest components
trol, chat and file transfer facility only. Similarly, the Guest is easy. Once the Host has been installed, it can be configured to
module for Windows provides all functionalities, but only re- cater to any Guest. Plus, policy settingss can be made about each
mote connection facility is available for the Guest module on 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.
By selecting the host from network-list and appropriate com- B OTTOMLINE : A good buy for enterprises that want to
munications profile, we can connect with the host machine centralize their maintenance and support tasks.

Reviews

Reviews

reviews_Avaya Switches_final.qxp 10/22/2007 1:14 PM Page 106
Reviews
Extreme Networks Summit X250e-24P

This 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
T
his switch has the ability to handle voice traffic for tele-
Price: Rs 76,000 (1 yr warranty)
com service providers and data centers. It has 24 10/100
Meant For:Telecom providers, Data Centers
ports, and two shared Gigabit Ethernet ports. The X250e
series switches are stackable and so there are two stacking inter- Key Specs: Modular OS, port mirroring, PoE,
EAPS, VLAN, MAC address filtering
faces provided at the back.
Pros: Good performance, detailed Web based
The switch provides high availability and performance with management interface
its advanced traffic management features like modular operat- Cons: None
ing system and redundant power supply. ExtremeXOS, the mod- Contact: Avaya GlobalConnect, Gurgaon
ular operating system that it comes bundled with, monitors each Tel: 9818672278 Email: kl.narayanan@avaya
independent OS process and in case any of them halts, it auto- globalconnect.com
matically restarts the process resulting in continuous network
SMS Buy 131186 to 56767
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 the IP has been configured, the switch can be managed through
calls or digital video feeds transmitted do not drop or freeze due CLI or a Web interface, called ExtremeXOS Screenplay. The lat-
to link fail-over on the network. ter interface is quite detailed and provides functionalities to con-
The Summit 250e-24P supports Power over Ethernet and figure VLANs, set policies for ports and monitor them, and view
can be used by devices that require power from LAN connections, statistics related to network traffic.
such as IP telephones. The switch also supports the We tested the switch using NetIQ Qcheck in an isolated net-
standard Layer 2 and Layer 3 fea- work. It gave a throughput of 94.118 Mbps for transferring
tures such as 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.
Spanning Along with Summit X250e-24P we also received another
Tree Protocol, Link Aggrega- switch from the X250e series, the Summit X250e-48T. This
tion, DHCP and Quality of Service (QoS). switch has mostly similar features but twice the number of
Other two features, MAC filtering and port mirroring, make 10/100 ports, however, it does not support Power over Ethernet.
it a more secure device to connect your wares with. Especially The price is also same as that of X250e-24P and the performance
MAC filtering, which allows a port to be dedicated to a given MAC is equally good.
address and locked for any new network device, thus preventing
network attacks from frequently changing MAC addresses. BOTTOMLINE: Its performance and features make it ideal
The switch doesn’t get shipped with a default IP. That has to for networks where VoIP or high density data streaming
be configured through its Command Line Interface (CLI). Once are used.

reviews_HP ProCurve Switches_final.qxp 10/22/2007 10:08 PM Page 124
Reviews
HP ProCurve LAN-Edge Switches

A pair of managed and unmanaged switches that provide a good set of features for deployment on the edge of
a LAN. They’re fit for organizations on a tight budget
Rahul Sah
T
his time we received a managed and unmanaged HP
ProCurve switch. These are both meant to be used at Price: 1400 24G: Rs 16,950
the edge of the LAN in an organization. 1700 24G: Rs. 12,750 (lifetime warranty)
Meant For: LAN-Edge
HP 1700 24G
Key Specs: See Table
This is a 22-ports managed Fast Ethernet switch with 2 dual-
personality ports. It supports IEEE 802.3ab Link Aggregation Pros: Easy to configure/setup; lifetime warranty
Control protocol and 802.3x Flow Control protocol to enable Cons: Drop in throughput when flooded with traffic
transmission and reception of data in an orderly manner. It
Contact: HP ProCurve Networking, Bangalore
also comes with some QoS features, such as IEEE 802.1p port
Tel: 25041424 Email: surya@hp.com
prioritization that delivers data to devices by honoring preset
priorities. Its MAC address table supports up to 8000 entries, SMS Buy 131188 to 56767
which help the switch in supporting a large network. Broad-
cast Control is another QoS feature that cuts down unwanted one end to another and in a response time of 1 ms, which is
broadcast traffic on the network. The switch also features a pretty similar to the performance of Netgear ProSafe FS728TS
fan-less design for silent operation. switch (reviewed August ‘06). Further,
It is easy to configure through a Web- when we flooded the switch
based interface. The VLAN with excessive traffic, the
configuration with this switch still managed an aver-
browser-based interface age throughput of 56 Mbps.
was easy and also the fea-
ture of supporting Jumbo HP 1400 24G
frames can be enabled This is a 22-ports unmanaged
through this interface. Gigabit Ethernet switch, which also has 2
Jumbo packet support means dual personality ports. It supports auto-sensing of link speed
frame size can be up to 9216 bytes to and auto-negotiation of half or full-duplex modes on each
improve performance for large data transfers. The interface port, so that the network devices work the moment they’re
not only gives configuration and monitoring functionalities connected to it. Just like its cousin, it also supports 8000 en-
but also has the option for setting security and doing diagnos- tries in its MAC address table, supports Jumbo frames, and has
tic tests. Coming to performance, we stressed the switch with a fan-less design. This switch gave an average throughput of
NetIQ Qcheck. It gave a throughput of 94.118 Mbps on an iso- 615.4 Mbps for transferring 1000 Kbytes of payload from one
lated network for transferring 1000 Kbytes of payload from 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
Key Highlights gave 728 Mbps (reviewed July ‘06). Its throughput dropped to
HP 1700 24G: Web-based mgmt; 8000 MAC
470 Mbps when we flooded it with excessive traffic.
address table entries; Support for Jumbo frames;
Link aggregation; QoS; VLANs
BOTTOMLINE: Given the prices, these switches are a good
HP 1400 24G: 8000 MAC address table entries;
buy for organizations looking for cost effective products
support for jumbo frames; auto-negotiation
to put on their LAN-edge.

reviews_Dell Inspiron 1720_Asus W5Fe Notebook_final.qxp 10/22/2007 10:03 PM Page 125
Reviews
Acer TravelMate 6292 Price: Rs 69,999 (1 yr warranty)
Saurangshu Kanunjna
Key Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7100 (1.8
GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD), 12.1” WXGA
T his 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,
LCD, Media Accelerator X3100, DVD R/W, WLAN,
Webcam
Contact: Acer India, Bangalore
the inclusion of magnesium alloy into the chassis for robust-
Tel: 5219520
ness is one such example. Strangely, there is no latch to lock Email: rajesh_aiyar@acer.co.in
the lid which is a slight disadvantage. Based on the latest In- SMS Buy 131190 to 56767
tel Santa Rosa Platform it comes with 1 GB RAM and 160 GB
HDD. There is a 12.1” widescreen with native support for placement of fingerprint reader could have been a little better
1280x1024 resolution. Con- instead of being between the mouse buttons.
nectivity options abound: Performance wise it fared well in PC Mark05 with a score
there are three USB ports, of 3644 which is good for this price bracket. This score was
FireWire Port, mem- better than that of Connoi FL91. It couldn’t run 3D Mark06
ory card reader, with its onboard graphics, which should not be a concern
Bluetooth etc. atleast for business travelers. In battery test, it fared very well
The finger- with a battery backup of 3.32 hr, which is adequate for busi-
print option ness travelers and is more than what we got from Connoi FL91.
provides an
extra layer of se- BOTTOMLINE: If your need is of a strong productive ultra-
curity, though portable notebook, this is a good bet at this price.
Asus W5Fe Notebook Price: Rs 94,500 (3 yr warranty)

Saurangshu Kanunjna Key Specs: Core 2 Duo (T7200), 512 MB RAM,
1.3 MP Web Cam, FireWire port, 12.1”
A sus 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
widescreen, auxiliary LCD display
Contact: Asus Technologies, Mumbai

the cover of the LCD which lets you view photos, meeting Tel: 67668800 Email: media_india@asus.com
schedules, phone numbers and play music. Based on Intel’s
SMS Buy 131191 to 56767
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 signed and quite comfortable for a 12.1” notebook.
Cam, Bluetooth, It scored 3419 in PCMark05, which is slightly lesser than
FireWire port, Acer Travel Mate, but still reflects a good high-end application
memory card performance. The lack of a good graphics processor in the
reader, etc. It notebook was evident from the score of 225 in 3DMark06 but
weighs around 1.7 a battery backup time of around 4 hours is fabulous; more
Kg, which is pretty than what we got from Acer Travel Mate or Connoi FL-91. Its
comfortable for a fre- Vista performance was also at par though a higher RAM
quent trav- would have given it an extra edge.
eler.
The key- BOTTOMLINE: A limited edition product, it’s meant for
pad is well de- those who desire exclusivity and class.


reviews_thinkpad +acer travelmate 6292.qxp 10/23/2007 7:58 PM Page 1
Reviews
Lenovo Thinkpad T61p Price: Rs 1,65,000 (1 yr warranty)
Saurangshu Kanunjna Key Specs: Core 2 Duo (T7700, 2.40 GHz), 2 GB
RAM, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, 160GB HDD,
A much 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-
UWB chip, Fingerprint reader, Vista Ultimate,
15.4” LCD
Contact: Lenovo India, Bangalore
ful NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M graphics instead of ATI
Tel: 22108490 Email: buy@in.lenovo.com
Radeon, leading to a boost in overall graphics experience.
Widescreens are a norm these days and T-series is no different
SMS Buy 131192 to 56767
with a 15.4” LCD. Its design is pretty similar to the other
Thinkpads; however, it’s much lighter and sleeker than the In PC Mark05 a mammoth score of 4751 makes it stand tall
T60p. What’s more, it has a among all other notebooks. The Dell Inspiron 1720,
plethora of features reviewed elsewhere in this issue, scored 3626 in the same
such as a test. In 3D Mark06, though it didn’t beat the Dell Inspiron
finger print 1720 but a score of 1606 is still very high compared to
reader, a secu- others. Its Vista performance was second to none and a
rity chip and a battery backup time of 3 hours and 53 mins is sufficient for a
FireWire frequent traveler.
port.
It per- BOTTOMLINE: Power users, on the look out for a high per-
formed pretty formance notebook with class and elegance, would savor
well in all our tests. this one.
Dell Inspiron 1720 Price: Rs 1,81,335 (1 yr warranty)

Saurangshu Kanunjna Key Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (T7500, 2.20 GHz), 4
GB RAM, two 250 GB HDDs, Blu-ray drive, 17”
widescreen, large keyboard with separate numeric
D ell’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
keypad, 2 MP Web-cam, Bluetooth 2, 4 USB ports,
memory card reader, FireWire
graphics, and even a Blue-ray drive, it’s truly a mean machine Contact: Dell India, Bangalore, Tel: 25068026,
Website: www.dell.co.in
for power users. Its overall multimedia experience was en-
SMS Buy 131193 to 56767
thralling. There’s a DirectMedia Button
to instantly access DVD
movies, music, it to outperform all players in the league with such a configu-
photo slide- ration. In 3D Mark06 however, it beat Lenovo T61p’s (also re-
shows, and viewed in this issue) score of 1606, with a score of 2730,
videos, all with clearly showing its gaming supremacy. In PC Mark05, it
a pair of good scored 3626, which is high, but lower than T61p’s score of
speakers. 4751.
One obvi- In Battery Mark4, it gave a battery backup of around 4
ously ex- hours and 15 min, which is 30 min more than the T61p.
pects
B OTTOMLINE : It’s a lucrative option for power users, if
they’re willing to pay the price.

Reviews Connoi+ _Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM.qxp 10/22/2007 9:45 PM Page 1
Reviews
Connoi FL91 Price: Rs 43,500 (1 yr warranty)
Saurangshu Kanunjna Key Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo (T7100, 1.8 GHz,
1 GB DDR-II RAM, 80 GB HDD, 15.4” WSXGA
T his 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
widescreen, Intel Graphics GM 965, Broadcom
Gigabit LAN, DVD R/W
robust when it comes to their build and looks, and this too is Contact: Connoiseur Electronics, Bangalore
no different. But they have worked on the overall outlook of Tel: 41152202 Email: harish@connoiseur.com
the notebook and have improved its design, though they could SMS Buy 131194 to 56767
have still worked on the quality of the Touchpad and the but-
tons. Nevertheless this one hosts loads of features, be it Blue- withVista Ultimate.
tooth, DVD R/W, or Web Cam, it has all that one can ask for Performance wise, you can’t expect a 43k notebook to out-
at this price range. It perform any of the top league players, nonetheless its per-
came preloaded 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 is

a good option for budget conscious business executives
Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM Price: 47,000 (Lifetime warranty)

Karan Bajaj
Key Specs: Excellent performance, supports
45 nm based processors
D DR2 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-
Contact: Avnet India, Ingram Micro, Kobian
Electronics, Transtek Infoways
Email:techsupport_india@kingston.com,
ing applications, there’s demand for even higher transfer speeds. Website: www.kingston.com/india
That’s why RAM manufacturers are coming out with DDR3 SMS Buy 131195 to 56767
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 which does a series of read, write, copy and latency tests with a
well, preventing the RAM varying load of 16 MB to 4 KB. The RAM modules scored 5851
from overheating. 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
The DDR3 RAM modules can achieve. This performance however,
modules support will come at the cost of compatibility. They are incompatible
1.9 GHz frequency, and we with DDR2 RAM slots owing to their different key notch
tested them in dual mode on a PC location.
with an Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66 GHz BOTTOMLINE: Overall, these RAM modules give excellent
processor, an Asus P5k3 Deluxe motherboard, and ATI performance, but their cost is still on the higher side
Radeon X1950XTX 512 MB graphics card. We ran PCMark 05, compared to equivalent DDR2 modules.

reviews_perple nova_final.qxp 10/23/2007 9:57 PM Page 1
Reviews
PurpleNova Pro Price: $4.99 (per month)
Rahul Sah Key Specs: Web hosting of content, SSL protocol
support for private content; Local web server
P urpleNova Pro is a software that let’s you share your content apps hosting
online securely and directly along with a feature to host web- Contact: Infinishare Technologies, Pune
sites and web applications. For this, you don’t need to have a static Tel: 23095855
public IP. Anybody on a DSL line with a dynamic IP can use it. Each Website: info@purplenova.com
file hosted through PurpleNova is assigned a URL that can be mailed SMS Buy 131196 to 56767
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. your website, map the domain name to it, and you’re online. This
The interface to the software is simple and allows all hosting can be a good option for organizations who want to test out their
functionality through one window. Files can be hosted using Files websites over the Internet without first purchasing hosting space.
and Folders tab. A private access option lets the content to be The way it works is quite simple. All you need is a local web
viewed over SSL. If server to host your sites. It supports Apache, Tomcat, and IIS. Even
you have registered a a desktop OS like XP comes with IIS built-in. Simply upload your
domain name, but website to this web server, and use PurpleNova to create a URL for
don’t have a static IP it. Only one thing to keep in mind here is that the names of all
or webspace to host hosted apps should be in lowercase.
it, then you can use
PurpleNova for the BOTTOMLINE: Good option for small businesses to host
job. Simply create their web site and share content among clients. �
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reviews_TeraStation Live NAS box_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:57 AM Page 1
Reviews
Buffalo TeraStation Live NAS Price: Rs 55,590 (2 yr warranty)
Rakesh Sharma Key Specs: RAID 0/1/5/10, 7200 rpm, power
backup, hot swappable drives, web-based file
T his 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
sharing, FTP server
Contact: Advent Infotech, Delhi
Tel: 41436752, Email: buffalo@adventelectron-
box supports RAID levels 0,1,5 and 10. It has both Gigabit Ether- ics.com; www.buffalo-asia.com
net and USB ports to connect it on a network as a NAS or directly
SMS Buy 131198 to 56767
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 To test the NAS we transferred 100 GB of data between the NAS
in FTP server for easy ex- and a PC with a 400 GB, 7200 rpm HDD. Transfer to the PC took
change of files. Plus, it 1 hour and 27 mins, while the transfer back to the NAS took 1
even allows you to share hour 36 secs. FTP transfer however was much faster, and took
your files and folders over only 57 mins. We also ran NetBench and got a maximum
the Internet. For this Buf- throughput of 33 MBps with RAID 0, which is pretty average as
falo has setup a separate compared to the cheaper TeraStation Pro II (reviewed in June
website that allows peer 2007). The latter also has a higher transfer rate.
to peer connectivity be-
tween different TeraSta- BOTTOMLINE: Choose this if you need a high capacity NAS
tion Live boxes. box for a small office.
Asus P5K3 Deluxe Motherboard Price: Rs 17,100 (3 yrs warranty)

Rakesh Sharma Key Specs: WiFi, Dual Gbe LAN ports, 6 USB
ports, 2 PCI-E X16 ports, DDR3, CrossFire, meant
T he 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,
for gaming PCs, support for Intel’s 45 nm CPUs
Contact: ASUS Technology
this also has a heat pipe running from North to South bridge, but Tel: 6766 8800, Email: media_india@asus.com
unlike others, it has an extra fan mounted over the heat pipe for SMS Buy 131191 to 56767
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 board is good. We tested it with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz
RAID 0 and 1. Plus, it supports 2 external SATA ports, 1 processor, 1 GB DDR3 RAM and an ATI Radeon X1950 series
FireWire, and 6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports. It graphics card. In 3D Mark 05 and 06, it scored 12746 and 6538,
doesn’t have a PS2 port for respectively, which are good scores. As compared to Gigabyte
mouse, so one P35-DQ6 (also reviewed this month) the performance is a little
needs better. In PCMark 05 also, it scored 7019 PCMarks, which is
to better than most high-end motherboards. In Doom 3, this
get a motherboard clocked up to 216 fps and its score in
USB mouse CINEBENCH10 was also very good.
to work with.
The perform- BOTTOM LINE: Being a 45 nm processor-ready motherboard
ance of this mother- and having DDR3 memory support, makes it a worthy buy.

reviews_Gigabyte P35-DQ6_final.qxp 10/23/2007 11:24 PM Page 1
Reviews
Gigabyte P35-DQ6 Motherboard Price: Rs 15,500 (3 yrs warranty)
Rakesh Sharma Key Specs: New P35/ICH 9R chipset, ATI
CrossFire and 45 nm CPU support, 2 PCI, 2 PCI-
T his 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
E x16, & 3 x1 slots, 6 SATA II ports, RAID 0, 1, 5,
& 10; 12 USB, 2 FireWire, & GbE port
Contact: Gigabyte Technology, Mumbai
come with this featuure. The board also supports 45 nm CPUs, Tel: 30616666, Email: sales@gigabyte.in
and comes with 4 memory slots that support up to 8 GB DDR2
SMS Buy 131179 to 56767
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 This motherboard was a good performer. We tested it with
SATA) connectors, which support RAID 0, 1 and JBOD. 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.
B OTTOM L INE : Overall, though its scores are slightly

lower than P5K3, its lower price makes up for that, and
makes it a worthy buy.
ECS NF650iSLIT-A Motherboard Price: Rs 4,500 ( 3 yr warranty )

Rakesh Sharma Key Specs: SLI support, Gigabit Ethernet, Intel
Core 2 Extreme processor
T his 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
Contact: ZENITH TECHNOLOGIES, Mumbai
Tel: 28377300
motherboard is meant for budget conscious buyers, especially Email: malay.ray@zenith-india.com
those on the lookout for high end performance and gaming SMS Buy 131180 to 56767
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 than the high-end Asus P5K3 (reviewed this month). In PC
port. On the back panel one can find 4 USB, 1 serial and 2 PS/2 Mark 05 this motherboard crossed Gigabyte P53-DQ6 (re-
ports. viewed this month) with a score of 6,979 PCMarks. In Doom3,
We tested it using Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz processor with it gave a maximum of 198.5 FPS which is again a good score.
1 GB RAM, Windows XP SP1 and 120 In CINEBENCH 10, when rendering with a single CPU, it gave
GB HDD. In 3D Mark 05 and 2,721 CB-CPU and rendering with two CPUs it gave 5007 CB-
06 the scores were CPU, slightly less than Asus P5K3.
12,664
3D
Marks and B OTTOMLINE : A great deal if you’re looking for a high
6,466 3D Marks, performance motherboard with decent features at a
which are even better cheap price.

book review_final.qxp 10/24/2007 9:22 AM Page 144
Books
Steering Project Success
T argeted basically at IT professionals, this book
provides 7 guidelines (mantras) to steer a proj-
ect to success. With its easy and lucid language, this
Author: Madhavan S Rao
Price: Rs 450
book gives a reader the sense to correlate himself Pages: 228
with the given examples and use them in his life. This
Distributor: Tata McGraw-Hill, Delhi
book concentrates on project management and pres- Tel: 4383400
ents an innovative approach to managing project E-mail: priyanka_ virani@mcgraw-
hill.com
challenges. The first section begins with prospective SMS Buy 131151 to 56767
vulnerabilities in project management. The subse-
quent section explains how an exemplary project
management framework can be rolled out in a large organiza- snowballing methodology and an innovative concept called
tion having 1000+ PMs/PLs, across four geographies, viz., Chainge Management. In the last segment, the book explains
India, the US, the UK, and the APAC. The example uses a unique the conceptual base of each of the seven mantras.
Programming in C (Third edition)

T his 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
Author: Stephen G Kochan
Price: Rs 299
discuss how to debug C programs and give the reader Pages: 543
an overview of the pervasive field of Object Oriented Distributor: Pearson Education, Delhi
Programming or OOP. Tel: 43030215
E-mail: babita.chauhan@pearson.co.in
In all, this book contains 19 chapters that cover
SMS Buy 131152 to 56767
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 ming fundamentals. All chapters contain really helpful exer-
popular gdb debugger is used to explain the debugging process. cises. We can say that this book is a good tutorial and it really
The last chapter of the book covers Object Oriented Program- helps you to brush up your C programming.
VBA for the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Authors: Paul McFedriesel
I f 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.
Price: Rs 350
Pages: 406
It teaches you how to automate routine office tasks
Distributor: Pearson Education, Delhi
using basic VBA programming. Tel: 43030215
This book tells you about how to write programs E-mail: babita.chauhan@pearson.co.in
that will let you control Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SMS Buy 131153 to 56767
Access database, and even Outlook e-mail. There is
a bundle of examples in this book, all based on the Office
2007 applications. Advanced Email Rules, Build Custom Dialog Boxes, Control
A few topics that have been covered in this book are Pro- Macro Security and more. Overall, a great book for developers
gram Access Databases, Automate Document Backups, Create of all levels wanting to program Microsoft Office Suites.

news_october 07_anil.qxp 9/24/2007 12:37 AM Page 126
news_November 07_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:03 PM Page 133
NNews
ews&&Launches
Launches
25 New Information Backup on VMware by EMC

Infrastructure CISCO presents 802.11n
TI's Floating-Point wireless
Starter Kit
Here comes a combo of data de-duplication backup solutions Cisco introduced an integrated 802.11n solution designed to com-
Products Texas Instruments has introduced floating-point
from EMC, designed for virtualized environments. New EMC bine wireless performance and reliability with simplicity of deploy-
In one of its major Indian launches recently, EMC announced TMS320F2833x digital signal controllers (DSCs) by intro-
Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware Infrastructure is fully virtu- ment. Cisco’s Unified Wireless Network offering includes the modu-
25 new information infrastructure products and solutions. ducing the F28335 eZdsp starter kit. Now sampling, the
alized de-duplication solution for backup and recovery. In addi- lar Cisco Aironet 1250 Series access point, an enterprise-class 11n
Here are some of the important ones. The CLARiiON CX3-10 F28335 controller is a floating-point DSC, supplying devel-
tion, EMC is introducing the new EMC Avamar Data Store, a access point, as well as the 48 Gbps scalable Cisco Catalyst 6500-
FC/iSCSI System that can scale to 30 TB of capacity. It features opers of industrial systems with the inherent floating-point
complete, packaged solution consisting of leading EMC Avamar based wireless local-area network controller system, and wired and
combined Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI connectivity within the advantages of performance and simplified software develop-
data de-duplication backup and recovery software running on wireless services with the Release 4.2. Cisco will also deliver, via its
same array. The Symmetrix DMX-4 series features an end-to- ment over fixed-point devices. The simplified software devel-
pre-configured EMC-certified hardware. family of Catalyst switches, the ability to fully power the dual-radio
end 4 Gbps architecture, a new FC point-to-point back-end. opment and performance boost common to floating-point
SMS Buy131013 to 56767 Aironet 1250 Series from a single Ethernet port.
They support both high speed FC disk drives and new low-cost processors offer better power efficiency for greener indus-
SMS Buy131015 to 56767
750 GB SATA II disk drives that, according to the company, can trial applications. For example, the F2833x devices enable
AMD’s ambitious x86 Processor
reduce energy consumption by up to 33 percent. The newest variable speed alternating current (AC) drives, which use
AMD introduces its much talked about native x86 microproces-
generation of EMC Centera, a content addressed storage (CAS)
NetApp’s new FAS appliances
one-eighth the energy compared to constant speed counter-
sor, Quad-Core AMD Opteron. It is specifically designed for the Network Appliance unveiled FAS2020 and FAS2050 of its new
system, which has specifically been designed with low-power parts. The floating-point devices also enable clean energy
energy hogging data centers, and promises good performance- FAS2000 series of fabric attached storage. With a host of connec-
processors and chipsets, adaptive cooling and more efficient through solar power inverters that more efficiently convert
per-watt for servers. According to the company, it improves en- tivity options and support for almost all prevalent protocols, it of-
power supplies to reduce energy consumption, while also offer- energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels.
ergy efficiency by 50 percent in integer and floating-point fers deployment versatility and connectivity to satisfy
ing 50 percent more storage capacity per node using new 750 SMS Buy131123 to 56767
operations, enhances virtualization performance, and protects your data protection, recovery, and storage scalability needs. It
GB SATA disk drives. EMC NetWorker support for De-duplica-
investment via a user-centric approach enabling non-disruptive supports dual controller active-active (HA) throughput, high-per-
tion and Continuous Data Protection (CDP), RecoverPoint, ProCurve's 8212 Core Switch
transitions from dual- to quad-core within the same power and formance SAS infrastructure, 4 Gigabit FC from end to end, and
Rainfinity File Management Appliance (FMA), and 6 enterprise ProCurve Networking has announced the availability of an
thermal envelopes to help keep infrastructure costs down. onboard remote platform management.
content management (ECM) platforms based on Documentum enterprise-class network core switch, the ProCurve Switch
SMS Buy131014 to 56767 SMS Buy131016 to 56767
are the other few that need a mention. 8212zl. The core switch completes ProCurve’s core-to-edge
SMS Buy131122 to 56767 network solution that unifies network technology, infra- �
133
147 PCQUEST SNEOPVTEEMMBBEERR 2 02 0 70 7
PCQUEST A CYBERMEDIA Publication
news_november 07_final.qxp 10/23/2007 10:05 PM Page 134
News & Launches

structure, software, operation, man- architecture and hardware purchases.
The Revenue Generator agement and support. The switch The launch was announced at Syman-
comes with ProCurve’s lifetime war- tec Vision,2007, in Mumbai, an event
ranty and it is based on HP-developed organized by Symantec. The event fo-
ProVision ASIC technology, a highly cused on various security problems
integrated architecture that delivers faced by individuals and enterprises
redundancy and resiliency. ProCurve and guided them with various solu-
also announced the ProCurve Wireless tions and ways to solve through differ-
Edge Services zl Module that adds cen- ent sessions. Delegates could also get a
tralized wireless local area network first hand demo of some of Symantec’s
(WLAN) configuration, management latest products and
and advanced wireless services to the solutions.
8212zl core switch and 5400zl edge SMS Buy131124 to 56767
switch family.
SMS Buy131121 to 56767 HP's Green Initiative
HP has announced the availability of
SNIA completes 10 years, its Adaptive Infrastructure services,
reaffirms its part of its green initiative for making
mission existing and upcoming data centers
The Storage Networking Industry Asso- more energy efficient, in India. The
ciation (SNIA) unveiled an expanded solution offering includes Dynamic
mission and vision that positions the Smart Cooling (DSC) technology that
association to lead the industry in de- helps tackle one of the most critical
veloping and promoting standards, issues in today’s data centers, that is,
technologies, and educational services power and cooling. DSC enables to
to empower organizations in the man- change data center energy costs from a
agement of information. Unveiled on fixed to a variable cost, significantly
the association's 10th anniversary, the increasing IT scaling headroom.
SNIA also launched new branding, BladeSystem c-Class that, according to
which includes a website redesign and the company, uses up to 27 percent less
a new logo in support of the associa- power than competition products in
tion's forward-looking mission and vi- similar configurations. The company

Very easy to implement sion. SNIA India was formally claims that with this blade server offer-

Available in convenient models such
as Parallel Port & USB launched in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai ing, an average enterprise data center

Supports Standalone, Networks & and Pune and now holds membership can realize over a three-year period:
Web applications effectively

Supports DOS / All Windows strength of over 87 members. Owing to system acquisition cost savings of up to
Versions / Linux / Novell under all its superlative performance, it has re- 41 percent; data center facilities cost
popular programming languages.
cently been awarded independent sta- savings of up to 60 percent; and initial
Sentry Hardware Lock helps protect tus by SNIA International Board. system setup time cost savings of up to
your Software from piracy &
lets you earn more money rather 96 percent. HP claims that its 'green'
than a Pirate ! Symantec’s Storage United storage technology can cut storage
Symantec has launched Storage United array power and cooling costs in data
that provides a comprehensive layer of centers by 50 percent, besides it offers
data protection, storage management consultancy to harness opportunity for
and archiving software. As a result en- power savings through server and stor-
terprises will have flexibility and con- age virtualization.
trol over their storage and server SMS Buy131125 to 56767 �

advertisers indexOcto07.qxp 10/24/2007 1:44 AM Page 135
ADVERTISERS’ INDEX
Advt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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: support.india@samsung.com . 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

ExtraEdge Biztalk RFID_LP2.qxp 10/23/2007 11:24 PM Page 136
Extraedge
Microsoft’s BizTalk RFID

A new solution to help organizations build RFID based business solutions.It separates the business logic from
the underlying RFID devices, making it easier to build RFID based workflows
Saurangshu Kanunjna
FID technology needs no introduction. It’s been
R around for a long time, and one has heard of

many success stories of how it’s helped many
organizations in smoothening their inventory manage-
ment and asset management. What’s new is Microsoft’s
entry into this hot area, with an interesting solution.
Called BizTalk RFID, the solution is meant to allow
Microsoft’s partners to develop customized RFID
based solutions for customers. Apart from the fact that
RFID 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 followed
An RFID device being shown using BizTalk RFID as a background
by anybody, nor is there a common set of protocols.
solution for tracing shipment of goods
Everybody follows their own communications pro-
tocols and standards. Therefore, it becomes very face has been added, which provides a generic set of
difficult for one to manage a RFID based solutions. APIs for RFID hardware vendors to ensure that their
Microsoft aims to tackle all these challenges by provid- products work seamlessly on it.
ing a common platform that provides a uniform way to Next big thing in the architecture of BizTalk RFID is an
discover, communicate, and manage RFID devices. Engine and Runtime layer. This allows developers to
The platform architecture is such that it can allow all create, deploy and manage logical RFID processes.
kinds of RFID devices—current ones, older generation They can build complete workflow solution for an
ones, next generation ones, etc, to be incorporated organization on this engine. Moreover, Microsoft is
easily. For this, a special Device Service Provider Inter- also providing adapters to integrate RFID solutions
with other LoB applications like ERP, Warehouse Man-
agement Systems, or other similar apps.
There are many advantages to this approach, as pointed
out 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 solution
can work well with other MS applications like SQL
Server, BizTalk server, Windows Workflow Founda-
tion, and even Microsoft Dynamics. Lastly, the solution
Source: Microsoft Crop., 2006
provides two other tools-- an administrative console

called “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 same
worldwide. Whether it will succeed in India remains to
be seen.

final cover_Nov07-4.qxp 10/24/2007 9:29 PM Page 1
How to Keep Your Apps Healthy ◆ Running Linpack on Windows Compute Cluster
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qxp 10/24/2007 4:00 PM Page 4

In this Issue November 2007

Wireless: The Story So Far

Using Explorer as Shell 109 Discussions and Support @

2 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

In this Issue November 2007

ENTERPRISE IMPLEMENTATION 14 VERTICAL FOCUS

Remote Application Streaming 41 Bank on IT to KeepYour

Free Health Checkup

and desktop apps, 13 Top Utilities, and 13 Top

NetOP Remote Control 9.0

Plus, get ZKoss 3.0 RC,

WS_FTP home edition guide

Extreme Networks Summit X250e-24P HP

ProCurve LAN-Edge Switches 124

4 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Editor-in-Chief: Shyam Malhotra

Anil Chopra, Editor

6 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

CHENNAI Swapnil Arora

8 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Exams Via Linux in Kerala

browser and go to https://local-

10 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

IT has extended the business of banking to

14 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

iven the frenetic pace of life, we’re all hard-

G pressed for time and energy to take care of

15 PCQUEST NOVEMBER 2007 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

ATMs:A quick rewind

16 PCQUEST NOVEMBER 2007 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

How would you rate the adoption of IT by your bank and

18 PCQUEST NOVEMBER 2007 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Biometric banking@Canara Bank

20 PCQUEST NOVEMBER 2007 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

22 PCQUEST NOVEMBER 2007 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Increasing IT Orientation of the Indian Banking Industry

W ith the entry of large foreign banks in the Indian

and reliability. The banks in India are looking to Punch Card

24 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

26 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Anindya Roy, Jasmine Desai, with inputs from Shashwat Chaturvedi

30 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

32 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

36 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

OOXML or ODF:Which One Will Survive?

38 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

40 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Remote App Streaming

long-awaited first public beta of Mi-

41 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

42 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Virtualization in Windows Server 2008

44 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

Windows Hypervisor let’s you create virtual machines through

46 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

IIS 7:A Modular Approach

pipeline rather than a monolithic

48 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

set of features. For instance, ASP.NET

50 PCQUEST N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 A CYBERMEDIA Publication

The Linux Rescue Box

the Rescue Server from the link given in