Careers: Interviews
Dot Net Leader
This week, Stephen had the
opportunity to speak with YONG TAO CHEN. Amongst his
many accomplishments, YT was the first in Canada to
achieve the SQL MCDBA designation, CNA, MCSE+I, MCSD,
CSP and NSP titles. YT earned his Bachelor of
Science degree in Chemistry and his Masters of
Business Administration from the University of
Xiamen. His global top-ranking knowledge was
utilized by two of the largest financial web sites
where he was responsible for key architectural
solutions involving advanced indexing, fault
tolerant replication, storage procedures with
cluster SQL Server 7.0 Databases, and query design.
YT recently had an advanced article on SQL Server
published in the elite British industry-leading
technical journal Xephon. YT is currently leading a
dot net web services design and implementation
project, continuing his work on the leading edge of
business internet technology
Q. Please detail your responsibilities and
background?
A. My IT experience began with hardware sales and
solution deliveries in China before I started my
applications development career. I have successfully
developed several types of Microsoft applications
including an e-commerce B-to-B web site as well as
web-based or Windows-based applications. My
experience also includes project design, planning
and management. I am currently developing a Dot Net
application using Microsoft’s latest technology. The
application also involves Windows CE programming, a
Crystal Enterprise web-based reporting system, and
Digital Dashboard programming.
Q. You have been working on a Dot Net project since
the day Dot Frame Work Beta 1 was released. Could
you describe your application and tell readers what
made you choose Dot Net as your infrastructure even
as a Beta version?
A. The application is a web–based application for
the ergonomic industry. The project deploys
client/server architecture and centralizes
databases. Data is synchronized between the client’s
CE forms and web portal using XML format and SOAP
protocol. Due to the scope and nature of the
project, we had done a lot of research work and
couldn’t find a cost-effective solution. This is why
we decided to adopt Dot Net technology immediately
after it beta release. The Dot Net solution makes it
possible to accomplish this enterprise-level project
with a minimum of developers.
Q. Based on your experience, do you have any advice
for those entering this area?
A. Basically there are two worlds in IT, Microsoft
and Non-Microsoft. Most of my experience comes from
the Microsoft world and I have gained huge benefits
from it; however, I always keep my eyes open on the
Non-Microsoft world. The Non-Microsoft world is
compounded by Sun Java, Oracle Database and other
Unix based solutions. I think there are different
philosophies and thinking between these two basic
worlds. Microsoft definitely leans a lot on the
easier user experience, while the Non-Microsoft
world is more focused on delivering solutions to
professional technicians. The two philosophies bring
different results: Microsoft products have less of a
learning curve even though they might lose a certain
level of stability and performance. Microsoft has
proved that it can switch it’s focus back to
stability and performance as a result of recent
products like Windows 2000 server and SQL 2000
server.
The rule to survive in this area is: “changing”, you
have to catch up the speed of “change”. Because of
the rapid changes, newcomers can easily find unique
positions compared to those with greater experience.
The fast wave, so to speak, will cast aside those
who can’t maintain the speed of change and it will
leave opportunities for those who accept its
challenge.
Q. What makes Dot net solution unique?
A. I found Dot Net was very easy to master. Due to
my previous programming experience on ASP, VB and
Java, I didn’t experience any learning curve when I
began work with this brand new technology. Though it
sometime seemed like Java, sometimes Access,
sometimes ASP, I could use all of it due to the
knowledge I had already acquired. Very seldom did I
find myself stuck on a new concept. Even our first
tools allow us to do web front-end, object-oriented
programming. What exciting news for our programmers!
When I program on Dot Net, it is more like
programming in a Windows environment. The rich user
and event-driven background makes things easier than
any other web-based programming. It is also very
easy to deploy and use, making it very
cost-effective compared to Java equivalent EJB.
I found Dot NET to be MUCH more memory efficient
than anything I’ve seen so far in Java. All web
forms share same CLR that uses significantly less
memory. This will have advantages for ISP's who
group multiple companies on a single host by
assigning different domains to different IP
addresses.
Q. What is the benefit of Dot Net to support
multiple languages?
A. No language has the advantage in all situations.
Some languages are just more effective than others
in certain circumstances. For instance, JScript and
LISP allow you to literally write the program as
it's running. VB.Net is easy to read, has better
control structures than Java and provides most of
the functionality of C# which, by the way, allows
pointers, unchecked calculations, and other unsafe
things considered too unacceptable for VB. On one
hand a developer must always be up-to-date in his
field (everybody is more or less specialized) and
have an open mind for new trends. On the other hand,
it's also not wise to try to “catch every train”
which passes by. It's not about making Microsoft
applications "web capable". It's about providing
superior tools for developing Web-enabled
applications on the Windows platform.
Q. Describe your programming experience on Dot Net
platform?
A. Dot Net has greater advantages than other web
based languages. Current programming languages for
data driven web application are limited by their
nature: Perl’s development lifecycles are too long;
ASP is not an event-driven or object-orient
language, same as JSP. Dot Net is a server side
event- driven platform which means that it can
handle an event from the server side. This largely
increases the capability of web-based applications.
While I am working with Dot Net, I find that user
defined web controls are very easy to use and
reduces the programmer’s development time by reuse
user controls. However, the event handling in user
controls still needs to be greatly improved.
Overall, Dot Net definitely represents the design
principle of web-based application and is the most
advance platform for web-based application even
though it still has a long way to maturity.
Q. Could you explain what is Dot Net?
A. Dot Net is a web-based application solution. It
is more an infrastructure than a language. It
contains two main languages: VB.net and C# and 15
other supporting languages. It deploys the Windows
2000 and SQL 2000 servers. It includes multi-tiered
architecture. It provides a Windows application
programming experience to web-based application.
Q. How do you see XML as an important component
fitting into this picture?
A. Lots of people have heard about XML for quite
sometime but there are some misunderstandings about
XML. For example, XML would replace HTML and work on
the presentation layer. Another one would be that
XML would dominate and replace everything. After
working with XML for about one year, I found that
instead of being a replacement for HTML, XML is more
like another option for data storage rather than a
Database server. XML is designed for “EXCHANGE”
data, not “DISPLAY” data. XML can represent more
than two dimensions data structure like other
database servers. It is easier to transfer data but
more difficult to do frequent transactional
operations. On my recent project, I used XML to
store web site structure and layout. I also use XML
for passing data between client and server. It is
more like a translator between different
applications.
Q. Will C# replace Java?
A. At the moment, C# is still platform dependent and
in beta version. It is difficult to see any great
benefit in upgrading old, large Java apps to C#.
However, C# is a Java/C++ look-alike and has all the
advantages of both worlds minus its weaknesses. C#
namespace is much more elegant than the Java
namespace base on directories. You’ve probably heard
about all the problems related to directory-based
namespace when deploying your apps. When Dot Net
becomes platform independent or Windows becomes an
enterprise level operations system, I can see C#
will surpass Java like Microsoft did to Novell, WPS
and Borland. I believe it will win out in the long
run.
Q. What do you think needs to be done to improve Dot
Net’s current version?
A. I found Dot Net framework Beta 1 to be very
stable compared to Virtual [Visual] Studio. Net. We
stopped using Virtual Studio.Net Beta after our
first try. Another aspect that I found while
programming was handling the dropdown list to
represent one-too-many relationships in web forms is
still limited. A great benefit of using Access or VB
programming is that these Windows application can
handle controls like a dropdown list for
representing multiple relationships easily. While in
Dot Net, you can see the improvement but there are
still limitations. The overall concepts of Dot Net
are great: things like web user controls, multi
dimension record set - Data set. Web user controls
save programming lifecycle a lot while but there is
still room for a lot of improvement. It didn’t
handle that event very well and it will lose data
set every time you refresh. |
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