XML in Action in Office 2003

Microsoft Office 2003 lets people use the products they're familiar with to write data to and read data from external data sources using XML and Web Services. This example shows how a user familiar with Excel can complete an expense report. The data can be written directly to a back-end expense-tracking database rather than lying captive inside an XLS file. Another Excel user (with the appropriate rights) can then tap into the database to analyze the expense data.

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Life Without Office

Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations dominate the business world; they've become de facto standards. It seems you can't escape Office even if you're unhappy with its price, its product activation scheme, or Microsoft in general. Fear not, there are numerous less expensive alternatives. While not quite as feature-rich as Office 2003, they handle all common tasks, including reading and writing Office files.

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Two major contenders are Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 7.0 Office Suite ($75.95 direct download, www.sun.com/staroffice; ) and Corel's WordPerfect Office 11 (Standard, $299.99; Professional, $342, www.corel.com; ). Both are powerful equivalents of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. WordPerfect Professional adds Paradox, a database program.

Microsoft Office users will find switching to StarOffice relatively painless, though they'll need to learn new names for some features. Switching to WordPerfect Office will take more adjustment, as the applications in this suite have had years to evolve their own user interface styles. But unique features like WordPerfect's Reveal Codes and real-time formatting preview can make the switch worth the effort.

StarOffice shares a source code base with the free OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org), which frequently offers newer versions of the applications. Sun tests the applications thoroughly before release, provides support, and also adds useful non-open-source utilities. Businesses will prefer this stability to living on the bleeding edge. And mixed-platform companies will appreciate StarOffice's support for Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

Both programs warn of possible data loss when saving in a Microsoft format—a problem we observed first-hand. After several rounds of editing this article in Word, WordPerfect, and StarOffice, we found that StarOffice's spell-checker marked every word as misspelled, and Word would not open it at all. We recommend saving files in your application's native format and exporting to the corresponding Office format only when needed.

Other alternatives include Gobe Corp.'s gobeProductive 3.0 ($99.95, www.gobe.com), an all-in-one application that provides the functions of a suite, and E-press's EasyOffice (free for personal use, www.e-press.com), which includes 19 distinct applications. For more on these and other choices, see "The Office Alternatives" (March 18, 2002).

Alacritech Launches New NAS Accelerator Appliance

The ANX 1500 appliance moves data faster in network storage systems without needing modifications to filers. And it just plugs right in.

With data stores continuing to get out of hand in terms of management control, the ability to move loads quickly and efficiently within system and time limitations is paramount for data centers.

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A growing number of companies are coming out with products specifically for that purpose. A prominent one is San Jose, Calif.-based Alacritech, which has a lot of IP in application acceleration and is now using it to speed up file service in network storage.

To this end, Alacritech unveiled the ANX 1500 appliance on Jan. 12, which moves data faster in network storage systems without needing modifications to filers. It just plugs right in, discovers what it needs in the system and works, Vice President of Marketing Doug Rainbolt told eWEEK.

"Isn't that what appliances are supposed to do?" Rainbolt asked, rhetorically.

The appliances, which also feature TCP/IP offload engines, can work natively with most NFS-based NAS filers, including those from EMC/Isilon, NetApp and BlueArc.

The 3U version of the ANX 1500 can take up to 20 solid-state drives; it comes in capacities of 2TB or 4TB. Both machines carry a whopping 48GB of DRAM.

Rainbolt said the ANX 1500 can perform up to 120,000 operations per second using 4TB of solid-state disk drive capacity and 48GB of DRAM.

Pricing starts at $70,000 for an appliance with 2TB of SSD capacity. A 4TB system starts at $100,000. They are available now.

Intel Sees Benefits, Challenges in Tablets, Smartphones

Intel has yet to play a major role in the exploding tablet and smartphone spaces, but the Web traffic generated by these devices is fueling strong growth in its enterprise server business.

Intel is yet to be much of a player in the booming tablet and smartphone spaces, a concern for industry observers in the long term. However, for now the burgeoning markets are helping drive demand in some of Intel's traditional businesses, and company executives continue to promise a strong presence in both device segments as 2011 rolls on.

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During a Jan. 13 conference call with analysts and journalists announcing the chip maker's record fourth-quarter and full-year numbers, CEO Paul Otellini said Intel will become a much larger player in both tablets and smartphones. In tablets, Otellini said he expects a host of Intel-powered devices to hit the market this year.

A key differentiator for Intel over rivals who use ARM or MIPS designs is that Intel's Atom platform can run Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, Google's Android and MeeGo, jointly developed by Intel and Nokia.

"By designing Atom-based tablets, [OEMs] have the opportunity to run multiple operating systems on it, which I think is unique to Intel," he said.

Otellini also reiterated that he expects smartphone designs powered by Intel technology to hit the markets this year.

Intel had a record fourth quarter that topped off a very strong 2010 that saw it bounce back from the global recession thanks in large part to its enterprise business, which helped buffer it against weakening consumer PC demand. In the fourth quarter, revenue came in at $11.5 billion—up 8 percent over the same period in 2009—with net income hitting $3.4 billion, a 48 percent jump.

For the year, Intel's revenue came in at $43.6 billion—the first year the company has generated more than $40 billion in revenue—a 24 percent increase over recession-ravaged 2009. Net income was $11.7 billion, 167 percent over the previous year.

Still, the bulk of that came from Intel's traditional PC and server businesses, and executives are anxious for the company to become a larger player in rapidly expanding markets like mobile and embedded devices. Though the dominant chip maker in the world, with more than 80 percent market share, Intel still has made few inroads into these areas that currently are the domain of ARM Holdings, whose designs are used by such vendors as Qualcomm and Samsung.

Intel has looked to expand into these areas through internal development—particularly of its Atom platform—and external acquisitions, such as its proposed $1.4 billion purchase of Infineon's wireless business, which Otellini and CFO Stacy Smith said should close this quarter.

However, while Intel makes its push into the mobile space, the rise of such devices as tablets and smartphones is helping fuel the company's strong server chip business, Otellini said. In 2010, about 245 exabytes of traffic crossed the Internet, he said. Over the next five years, 1 billion more people will get online and 15 billion more connected devices—from smart TVs to smartphones to tablets and PCs—will link into the Web, with traffic growing to more than 1,000 exabytes.

This is all driving the need for more servers to handle the traffic, Otellini said, pointing out that the company's data center group saw quarterly revenue rising 15 percent over the third quarter, and yearly revenue jumping 35 percent over 2009.

"The world of PCs plus new emerging computing devices is increasing the demand for servers of all types," he said.

Greg Richardson, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said the trend will continue to help Intel.

"Mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, are leading to an explosion in data and volume, resulting in growing demand for cloud and virtualized infrastructures," Richardson said in a research note. "Intel capitalized on the increased demand."

Intel's enterprise business will reap benefits from the tablet space, he said. The chip maker will be able to use its commercial presence in both servers and PCs to "establish a toehold in the business tablet space," Richardson said. Intel's server and storage businesses also will capitalize on the skyrocketing Internet traffic, particularly in such areas as virtualized and cloud-ready servers.

However, he warned that Intel is missing out by not being a larger player directly in the tablet space, which was revived by Apple and its iPad last year. Since April 2010, more than 10 million consumers worldwide have bought a tablet.

"The rub: To this point, these devices have been built on architectures that don't belong to Intel," Richardson said.

Intel will try to gain traction in the space with its upcoming "Oak Trail" Atom platform, but the company also must be able to quickly learn to play in such a lower-priced consumer device space, which is a different market from traditional servers and PCs, he said.

Microsoft's 70-270 Test

Microsoft's 70-270 test is all about gauging your aptitude in implementing, administering, and troubleshooting Windows XP Professional like a desktop operating system in whichever network setting, mainly, middle to very big computing environments. Once you pass this exam you will grow to be a MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional). This test is also like a gateway to the MCSA 2003 & MCSE 2003 certifications.

Why you need the Windows XP Professional 70-270 test?
By passing this exam, you get qualified for various high tech job roles, such as network administrator, systems engineer, information systems administrator, systems administrator, tech support engineers, network analysts, technical consultants and systems analysts. For more info about this test you can visit Microsoft's website.

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This MCP certification is suitable for those who are interested in working in a complex and high tech computing setting of medium and large scale organizations. And although you don't have to pass any prerequisites for taking part, it is still advised that you gather no less than one year's experience in installing and managing desktop operating systems in a network setting.

The number of questions you have to attempt is approximately 50 in 120 minutes. The passing score is 700. This exam usually comprises of Hot Area, Multiple Choice, Drag and Drop, Build a Tree, build list and reorder type questions. Although there are no case studies here, you should be ready to face unexpected simulation questions.

You can prepare for this exam using 70-270 sample tests and training available on the web. Also, the study materials for the 70-270 Exam are now available at highly affordable costs in various websites that offer certification exam resources. Moreover, these courses are also available as e-learning courses that you can attend online.

Given the length of this exam, you'll need to be well versed in every facet of Windows XP Professional. I'm going to break exam 70-270 down into several broad categories, including installation, basic administration, hardware devices and drivers, monitoring and optimizing, configuring the desktop environment, network configuration, and security free Cisco practice tests. I'll cover each of these categories in depth in the following sections.

Microsoft releases three critical bulletins but ignores Word flaws

For the first Patch Tuesday of 2007, Microsoft released four security bulletins, three of which it's rated critical. (The remaining update addresses an important threat.) But critical doesn't necessarily mean critical this month—in fact, Redmond left its most critical threats unpatched for the second month in a row.
Details

Microsoft began the year's patching cycle with a rather inauspicious start when it announced that it would issue only half of the security bulletins originally planned. However, some of the bulletins cover a number of vulnerabilities.

While the number of threats certainly looks bad on the surface, it turns out that only a few threats addressed in this month's updates are actually critical—and only for a few platforms. Here's a closer look at each update, in order of risk.
MS07-004

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-004, "Vulnerability in Vector Markup Language Could Allow Remote Code Execution," addresses the VML Buffer Overrun Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0024). I consider this the most significant update because attackers are already exploiting the vulnerability.

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This is a critical threat for Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, all versions of Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003; it is a moderate threat for Windows Server 2003 SP1. This update doesn't affect Windows Vista.

This bulletin replaces Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-055 for all affected platforms. Microsoft has already updated MS07-004 to version 1.1 to reflect a change in the restart requirement.
MS07-002

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-002, "Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution," addresses five separate vulnerabilities:

* Excel Malformed IMDATA Record Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0027)
* Excel Malformed Record Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0028)
* Excel Malformed String Vulnerability (CVE 2007-0029)
* Excel Malformed Column Record Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0030)
* Excel Malformed Palette Record Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0031)

With the exception of Excel 2007 and Microsoft Works Suite 2006, this update affects all other currently supported versions of Excel, including Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel Viewer 2003. This is a critical threat for Excel 2000; it is an important threat for all other affected versions.

These are newly discovered vulnerabilities, and there had been no reports of active exploits at the time of publication. You can check the security bulletin for an extensive list of mitigating factors and suggested workarounds, but they boil down to the commonsense best practice of being careful when opening Excel files.
MS07-003

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-003, "Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook Could Allow Remote Code Execution," addresses three separate vulnerabilities:

* Microsoft Outlook VEVENT Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0033)
* Microsoft Outlook Denial of Service Vulnerability (CVE-2006-1305)
* Microsoft Outlook Advanced Find Vulnerability (CVE-2007-0034)

With the exception of Outlook 2007, this update affects all currently supported versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002, and Outlook 2003. The Advanced Find Vulnerability is a critical threat for Outlook 2000 and an important threat for other affected versions, as is the VEVENT Vulnerability. The Denial of Service Vulnerability is a moderate threat for all affected platforms.

This bulletin replaces Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-003 for Outlook 2003 only. See the security bulletin for mitigating factors and workarounds.

While the Denial of Service Vulnerability was a publicly known threat, there had been no reports of active exploits at the time of publication. The other two threats are newly discovered vulnerabilities, and there had been no reports of active exploits at the time of publication.
MS07-001

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-001, "Vulnerability is Microsoft Office 2003 Brazilian Portuguese Grammar Checker Could Allow Remote Code Execution," addresses the Office 2003 Brazilian Portuguese Grammar Checker Vulnerability (CVE-2006-5574). This is a publicly disclosed threat, but there had been no reports of active exploits at the time of publication. However, Microsoft has reported seeing proof-of-concept code.

This update only affects the Brazilian Portuguese version of Office 2003 SP2, Office Multilingual User Interface 2003 SP2, Project Multilingual User Interface 2003 SP2, Visio Multilingual User Interface 2003 SP2, and Office Proofing Tools 2003 SP2. It is an important threat for all affected platforms.
UNIX

A new Mac OS X integer overflow vulnerability, UFS ffs_mountfs(), has surfaced, which can allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on version 10.4.8 and possibly other versions of the Mac OS X operating system.

In other news, Secunia reports that SuSE has updated multiple versions to fix a string vulnerability in w3m 0.5.1 (CVE-2006-6772.)
Final word

You'll notice that I've added a new UNIX category to the article, a feature requested by several readers. Let me know if you find it useful.

Keep in mind that it's difficult to cover UNIX platforms because there are so many versions and vendors. However, many of the threats extend across a number of platforms, so I'll do my best to provide updates for the most popular platforms or the most dangerous threats.

Exam 70-291:Managing and Maintaining a WIndows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure

Firstly, in my opinion, the key to pass MS exam is to make a study plan for your preparation 70-291. Of course, it is also important to get best materials or some useful advice from those who had passed your exams for us to prepare 70-291.

Secondly, you should do much practice to know what your disadvantage is or you should reinforce. If you can achieve both above points, you absolutely pass your MCSE 2003 70-291. For all this, I just want to make it clear what is my key point in my experience or the most useful advice in my opinion I can give you to prepare MCSA 70-291. En, I did pass my exam in about 2 months. In my opinion, MS Press Book 70-291, MS Readiness Review Suite. Besides, I used MS Virtual PC 2007. And you want to know the detailed information, please read my detailed plan.

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I did a job at a local school, en I could not spare much time for MS 70-291 exam. Generally Speaking, I just could study for approximately 2 hours per day weekdays, about 4 hours per day at the weekends. Although I did not have much time to study 70-291 Exam, I could concentrate my attention on books or practice when I wanted to study.

1. Firstly, I started reading the MS Press book for the first time and made notes on relevant points that I could either forget or need to reinforce. I managed to get the MS Press book down to around 150 pages of A4 note paper.

2. Then at the end of each Chapter, I would then install and use whatever I had learnt from the MS Press book, configuring it to mimic my working environment.

3. Then I rebuilt my whole entire Lab, to reinforce everything that I had learnt.

4. Then I kept going over my Notes on a daily basis at work, during lunch, in the evening. Just a brief flick threw. Don't ignore this. It could help us a lot.

5. The last of all I took the MS Readiness Review tests on a daily basis. Normally did around one a day for three days before the exam as not to get to many questions repeated. Also in my limited experience so far, the MS Readiness Review free Microsoft practice IT questions has always been a lot harder than the exam.

6. Take the exam and just believe in yourself!