Rob Tiffany on If you’ve used Merge Replication to sync SQL Server Compact data on mobile devices with #SQL Server in the past and you’re looking for a cross-platform solution to take you into the future, take a look at Zumero.
Read More Rob Tiffany on I’ve travelled all over the world assisting Chief Information Officers in the development of their end-to-end mobile strategies. Time and again, these CIOs inform me that pushing corporate data from their backend systems out to the wireless devices used by their employees is a top priority. This makes perfect sense because of the productivity and efficiency gains an organization accrues when employees are allowed to work anytime from anywhere. That timely information from backend systems empower employees to make better decisions at the point of activity. Of course, this works in two directions. Employees capture data at that same point of activity and it flows from the field to those backend systems. When data is allowed to flow bi-directionally in real-time, this speeds up the cadence of decision-making and gives the organization a competitive advantage. We saw this years ago with mobile email. When you combine wireless data networks, mobile devices, and a mechanism to seamless move critical data, you’ve created the most powerful weapon in business.
The Real-Time Enterprise. This is where a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform comes into play.
Just in case you’re unfamiliar with MEAP, it represents software and services that allow IT organizations to extend corporate apps and data out to mobile employees and business partners. This is most often accomplished via reusable mobile middleware components capable of supporting multiple mobile apps, multiple mobile operating systems, and multiple backend systems to maximize your ROI vs. tactical point solutions. Think of this as a server façade in front of your backend systems and databases. You might consider using a MEAP solution if your organization doesn’t have a mature SOA infrastructure or if your backend systems aren’t vertically-integrated to provide mobile client apps and connectivity. Gartner has a technology checklist of critical capabilities that a given MEAP solution must match up with in order to be considered. Since this series of articles is all about building the Microsoft MEAP solution, I’ll provide you with some guidance as to how Microsoft aligns with each of the critical capabilities:
A visual representation of many of these critical capabilities is shown below:
Looking at the picture above, you see a thin line going across horizontally. Everything below the line represents client capabilities whereas everything above the line lives in your data center or in the cloud. On the left side you see both the client and server elements of device management and your integrated development environment illustrated in blue. Staying below the line you see green blocks that represent thick and thin client runtimes as well as offline storage. You might be wondering why I included native and web-based offline storage when they aren’t listed as critical capabilities. In a world where there’s no such thing as a ubiquitous wireless network, you must be able to pre-fetch and store data offline so that your employees can keep working in the absence of connectivity. Moving above the line, you see that all clients connect to your server infrastructure via a multichannel access gateway. This is an edge server that provides reverse-proxy and/or VPN services. Above that you have mobile middleware components that handle data integration, web communication, auth/security, caching, and potential data aggregation.
Now let’s move away from the generic view of a MEAP infrastructure and zoom into why organizations think this stuff is important. It’s the tidal wave of devices!
The use of corporate-liable wireless devices combined with the BYOD phenomenon has made “Mobile” the largest megatrend in the world of enterprise technology. It’s already the largest megatrend with consumers. Nothing else even comes close. Now while I’d prefer that you use Windows Phones, tablets, and laptops, I want to make it easy for you to use your existing Microsoft server stack to support any mobile endpoint. I realize that there is one large, and many small MEAP vendors in the marketplace. In fact, the largest of those vendors is making a concerted effort to corner the enterprise mobile market via a number of MDM and MEAP acquisitions. You should realize that there’s limited value in dropping potentially millions of dollars on unfamiliar server infrastructures and development technologies that aren’t nearly as easy to configure and work with as it says on the sales brochure or in the marketing demo.
Pragmatically speaking, you should use the Microsoft server stack you already own to provide your organization’s MEAP solution.
In the forthcoming articles I’ll be writing, I’ll bring your CIO’s top priority to life:
Remember, the infrastructure folks in your IT department already know how to build, configure, and maintain the servers needed to build Microsoft MEAP. At the same time, your developers get to leverage the .NET and web service skills they’ve been perfecting for the last decade. The top priority for CIOs is to extend their organization’s critical data from their backend systems out to mobile devices. I’m going to show you how to build it using the skills your IT folks already have, and the software and servers you already own, with support from the world’s largest software company.
– Rob
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on You can download the new bits over at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665342.
This is a hotfix for an incorrect sort order for a subscriber in SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 that synchronizes with a publisher in SQL Server. For instance, you may have a column with an ASC index on SQL Server, but during sync, the sort order may not be specified. The problem occurs due to an incorrect index creation statement in the .OUT file in the virtual directory on IIS. Therefore, only the Server Tools need to be updated. Both x86 and x64 versions of the update are available to download.
Keep in mind that cumulative updates 6 and above will allow your Windows tablets, laptops and Windows Embedded Handheld devices to sync with SQL Server 2012.
Go get things sorted out,
-Rob
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on In this week’s scenario, I’ll use the picture below to illustrate how Android utilizes many of Gartner’s Mobile Enterprise Application Platform Critical Capabilities to connect to Microsoft’s Cloud services in Azure:
As you can see from the picture above:
While Android 3.0 and higher meets many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities, it doesn’t fare very well when it comes to cloud-based device management. While other mobile device platforms also come up short in this department, I’m sure this will change in the coming year. The tidal wave of CoIT means that device management in the future will look very different from how it did 5 years ago. Expect a clear separation between corporate apps/data and personal apps/data to be managed.
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on In this week’s scenario, I’ll use the picture below to illustrate how Android devices can utilize many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities to connect to Microsoft’s On-Premise infrastructure:
As you can see from the picture above:
Newer versions of Android (3.x/4.0) are beginning to meet more of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities. It’s really improved in the last year in areas of encryption, but device fragmentation makes this improvement uneven. The app story is still the ‘Wild West’ since the Android Market is an un-vetted free-for-all. This big ‘red flag’ has given rise to curated app stores like the one from Amazon. As you can see from the picture, the big gap is with the client application runtime critical capability. Native development via Java/Eclipse is where Google wants to steer you and Microsoft doesn’t make native tools, runtimes or languages for this platform. You can definitely perform your own due diligence on Mono for Android from our friend Miguel de Icaza and his colleagues in order to reuse your existing .NET and C# skills. From a Microsoft perspective though, you’re definitely looking at HTML5 delivered via ASP.NET.
Next week, I’ll cover how Android connects to the Cloud.
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on By now you’re probably thinking, “It’s easy to talk about Microsoft endpoints talking to Microsoft servers.” So in this week’s scenario, I’ll use the picture below to illustrate how iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad can utilize many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities to connect to Microsoft’s On-Premise infrastructure:
As you can see from the picture above:
As you can see, iOS meets many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities. It’s really improved over the years in areas of security and device management. As you can see from the picture, the big gap is with the client application runtime critical capability. Native development via Xcode/Objective-C is where Apple wants to steer you and Microsoft doesn’t make native tools, runtimes or languages for this platform. You can certainly kick the tires and perform your own due diligence on MonoTouch from our friend Miguel de Icaza and his colleagues in order to reuse your existing .NET and C# skills. From a Microsoft perspective though, you’re definitely looking at HTML5 delivered via ASP.NET.
Next week, I’ll cover how iOS connects to the Cloud.
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on Whether you’re talking about a Windows 7 tablet or laptop, I showed that you can follow the Garter MEAP Critical Capabilities to integrate with our stack in a consistent manner. Remember, the ability to support multiple mobile apps across multiple mobile platforms, using the same software stack is a key tenant to MEAP. It’s all about avoiding point solutions.
If you need a refresher on the Gartner MEAP Critical Capabilities, check out: https://robtiffany.com/meap/consumerization-of-it-collides-with-meap-windows-on-premises
In this week’s scenario, I’ll use the picture below to illustrate how Mobile versions of Windows 7 in the form of slates, laptops, and tablets utilize some or all of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities to connect to Microsoft’s Cloud infrastructure:
As you can see from the picture above:
As you can see from this and last week’s article, Windows 7 meets all of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities whether it’s connecting to Microsoft’s On-Premises or Cloud servers and infrastructure. They great takeaway from the picture above, is Windows 7 only needs to know how to integrate its apps with WCF in the exact same way as is does in the On-Premises scenario. Windows developers can focus on Windows without having to concern themselves with the various options provided by Windows Azure. Cloud developers just need to provide a WCF interface to the mobile clients.
When an employee walks in the door with a wireless Windows 7 Slate device, you can rest assured that you can make them productive via Windows Azure without sacrificing any of the Gartner Critical Capabilities.
Next week, I’ll cover how Windows Phone connects to an On-Premises Microsoft infrastructure.
Rob
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on Over the course of the next 20 articles, I’ll describe how IT professionals can use the principles of Gartner MEAP to connect any type of mobile device to Microsoft’s On-Premises and Cloud servers.
Gartner specifies the following Critical Capabilities that must be addressed in order for a given product or stack of products to be considered a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP):
A dedicated environment or plug-in for composing backend server and client side logic, including UI and UX
The client runtime logic for the application, either in native format or packaged within a container.
Tools for integration of mobile server with back end systems, both bespoke and purchased apps or application suites.
Self standing mobile applications or components.
Tools that allow for “write once, run anywhere” thick or rich mobile clients, cross compilers or environments or platforms that allow business logic to be supported across thin, thick, and rich mobile architectures.
Tools for provisioning, supporting, debugging, updating or decommissioning mobile applications.
Tools for ensuring the security and privacy of enterprise data on board the device, while transiting through wired or wireless networks, through peripherals, and with backend systems and integration packages.
The ability to host all development, provisioning, management functions, and optionally corporate data.
As you can see from the picture above, Windows 7:
It should come as no surprise that Windows 7 has a compelling and complete MEAP story to address the issues surrounding the Consumerization of IT (CoIT) when an employee walks in the door with a wireless Windows 7 Slate device.
Next week, I’ll cover how Windows 7 connects to the Cloud.
Rob
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on Nine times out of ten, this is the appropriate connection to make. Great UX folks at Microsoft came together to make Windows Phone 7 the most visually-appealing smartphone on the market and that’s a good thing. Lucky for me, great UX folks come to my rescue all the time because while I can build functional and usable client applications that solve users problems, my stuff isn’t that pretty. Gotta love Expression Blend and the people who can use it to transform your app!
There’s lots of folks out there that think they don’t have an actual connection to the end user because they develop on-premise and cloud server APIs. You know who I’m talking about. Server developers who are building Web Services using WCF to expose functionality to be consumed by clients. Web developers that are creating dynamic ASP.NET web pages that make AJAX requests. Well, I’m one of those people too.
Just because you don’t build client UI’s that people can see and touch, doesn’t mean you don’t have an important impact on UX.
Once a user gets past the “skin-deep” beauty of the UI you typically think of, they’re often more concerned about accomplishing the task that the mobile app was designed for. If a user taps on a button and has to wait over a minute to retrieve and display the data they’re requesting, it’s fair to say that they just had a poor user experience.
In our new world where wirelessly-connected smartphones and tablets rule the day, a number of factors that you may not have thought of, come into play that impact user experience. After the user clicks the button, and before data is retrieved, quite a few steps are taken through a very long path:
So it should be clear that despite the great convenience provided by wireless data networks, there are a lot of hoops built into the system that work against you to diminish the user experience. Doctors take an oath to “do no harm,” and I think server developers should take that oath to heart. You have a lot of options to consider to make this wireless journey as fast as possible in order to put a smile on the user’s face. Besides fast servers, lots of processor cores, fast SANs, caching, queuing, scaling out, data sharding, using the best SQL query plan, using faster code algorithms and such, I want you to optimize the stuff that’s actually going over the wireless network. I want to make sure you “do no harm,” and that means not using fat, slow transports and wire protocols to move your data between devices and servers.
If you’ve been to my Tech Ed sessions or read past blog posts from me, you know that speed and efficiency mean a lot to me. In the past, I’ve demonstrated 4 different ways to return a list of 8 delivery drivers from SQL Azure. Depending on the choice the server developer made, the resulting user experience could be bad or good.
Each one of the examples above returned the data my user was asking for, but they diverged in how much bandwidth they ate along the way. Guess what happens if you take advantage of the built-in gzip + deflate compression capabilities found in IIS 7? Through the use of the URL Rewrite Module, tweaks to your web.config file, and specifying an Accept-Encoding header like Nick Randolph figured out, you can shrink the 639 bytes to a fraction of that size. Now we’re talking great user experience here!
Now you’re on the right track with efficient, compressed, REST + JSON Web Services, so let’s move on to the mobile web.
Those giant, flashy websites you’ve been building since the 90’s aren’t going to cut it on mobile devices. It doesn’t matter that your iPhone or Windows Phone 7 browser can render the Wall Street Journal in all its glory. It’s not a good user experience. Have you ever heard the phrase, “just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do that thing?” Just because my mobile browser can flawlessly render the New York Times, doesn’t mean my user is interested in waiting till the next ice age of it to download and fully render. Oh, and then you have to pinch and zoom to actually find anything that your eyes can read. Do your users a favor and view my Tech Ed Europe session on the mobile web and download the mobile web best practices cards to build web sites for small screens and slow wireless networks with lots of latency.
Mobile web sites should be displayed in a single column, heavy on text, light on pictures and graphics, and weigh-in at under 20 kb in size. Yes, I just said under 20 kb. Just in case you’ve heard otherwise, the secret to a successful mobile web site is not HTML 5. Remember, the mobile web is all about reaching as many users as possible with your site or web application. I’ll have more to say about this in my forthcoming book on the subject.
Cloud and on-premise server developers have a big role to play in UX even if you can’t always see what they’re doing!
Keep coding,
-Rob
Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany
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Rob Tiffany on With the new version 4.0, the little-database-that-could has grown up into a powerful server database ready to take on the web.
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