Chemistry for Word Addin

Chem4Word addin makes it easier for students, chemists and researchers to insert and modify chemical information, such as labels, formulas and 2-D depictions, from within Microsoft Office Word.

Currently this addin is applicable for Word 2007 and above versions.

It uses Chemical Markup Language which is XML for chemistry. Good to see periodic tables appearing in Word documents.

Beta version of the product is currently available at http://chem4word.codeplex.com/

Demo - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/3fe31020-0e51-4ee0-ada3-5cd142bcf930/default.aspx

Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure launch

I went for the Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure launch yesterday. Visual Studio 2010 as usual has been released with lots of new features.

The Keynote on Windows Azure platform was provided by David Chappell. His presentation was really good and more informative too. I learnt a lot about Windows Azure yesterday.

Check his blog http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/. He has got some good white papers on Windows Azure Platorm and Applications Lifecycle Management (ALM).

TownHall - Engagement tool from Microsoft

Microsoft has launched a Cloud Computing product "TownHall" that would help Government to engage with the public using social media tools.

TownHall is a cloud based solution hosted on the Windows Azure Platform.

http://www.microsofttownhall.com/

TownHall allows users to post questions, raise concerns and share ideas with other community members, and vote on positions.

Concept looks good but UI is not looking so good.

SQL SERVER 2008 R2

SQL SERVER Express 2008 R2 databases can host databases of size up to 10 GB. Previously until the release SQL SERVER 2008 it was only 4 GB. It will really good for small business customers.

Full features supported by SQL SERVER 2008 R2

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(v=SQL.105).aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2010/04/21/sql-server-2008-r2-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Creating a package using SSIS

Currently working on a project to import data from one platform to another using SSIS 2008. This video helped me to get started with SSIS 2008.

The video outlines the basic steps to follow to create a package using SSIS using control flow and data flow.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc952921.aspx

Using SSIS on 64 bit plaform but the development tools are available (BIDS) only in 32 bit. So if you need to test the packages using 32 bit in the development and target it to 64 bit environment so that they can be executed on 64 bit platform.