Ariel Schapiro’s Blog

In the last few days we’ve been working on getting Litware HR application to run on Windows XP.

Litware HR was designed to run in Windows Server 2003 because it provides features that a real world production datacenter needs, such as the ability to run multiple websites at the same time. Through Litware HR community site, we collected feedback from people that would prefer to evaluate the application on Windows XP.

The first questions were: What are the issues of trying to run Litware HR on Windows XP? How can we solve them?

The thing is that Litware HR uses multiple websites: one that represents the SaaS provider website (www.litware.com), one for its services (services.litwarehr.com), one for all the tenants that use the application (www.litwarehr.com) and a couple of sample tenant’s institutional websites (www.contoso.com and www.fabrikam.com).

But Windows XP’s IIS (version 5.1) does not allow multiple websites, so what can we do?

One possible approach is to basically turn each one of windows Server 2003 websites into a Virtual directory in Windows XP’s IIS 5.1. Following this, instead of http://www.litware.com, we would have http://localhost/litware for instance:

Running Litware HR on windows XP implies the virtual directories structure change and others too. That is why we came up with a set of instructions that will allow you to work around the issues. We’ll keep working on this so hopefully a new MSI will be published soon; but if you want to test and evaluate LitwareHR on Windows XP today, please follow this how-to.

Note: Even if you follow the how-to steps, LitwareHR will not work under Windows Vista (yet :)) because ADAM is not yet compatible with that Windows version. See the related discussion:

 http://www.codeplex.com/LitwareHR/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=7203

Links:

• HowTo: run LitwareHR on a Windows XP box
• More LitwareHR news: http://www.codeplex.com/litwarehr.
• Send us feedback through the discussions boards and Issue Tracker.

Enjoy

Maybe you are familiar with the "under-promise, over-deliver" terms. In the case you don’t, the way I see it, they basically explain the good practice of setting stakeholder’s expectations under the level of what would be the final deliverable.

But what happens when someone, trying to make an over-deliver, end up by delivering something else that does not match the stakeholder expectations?

I call that "other-deliver":

How we should call something that in the mind of who delivers it is "far better from what they are expecting!" but when is finally delivered, the stakeholder claims "this is definitely not what I wanted!!!"?

Again, "other-deliver".

What is a developer doing when coming with the ideal solution that will solve everything and does anything but the only thing is expected to? Well, that developer is probably "otherdeliverying".

Maybe the point is not as much as seeking under-promise and over-deliver, else, getting first off the other-deliver.

So what can we do about it? I think that if an updated status of what the delivery will be about is always in both parties minds then the chances of falling into an other-deliver will be uncertain. Keeping an updated status may come in many flavors: meeting minutes, backlogs, tasks lists, SLA (Service Level Agreement).

These updated status tools would be helping on setting on the stakeholders the expectations needed in order to make the next over-deliver.

What do you think?

Imagine that you are a SaaS provider and you want to use LitwareHR. The first thing that you will do is to install in your datacenter, the structure needed in order to support LitwareHR’s application.

This is basically what we call "Datacenter Provisioning": the architecture setup needed to support LitwareHR’s application by creating the databases in SQL server, users and roles structures in ADAM and websites in IIS.

After this Datacenter Provisioning is done, each tenant will be able to perform a "Tenant Provisioning" which will add tenant information in those repositories.

This screencast shows what the Datacenter Provisioning does in order to build the structure that will support the SaaS application.

Get the screencast here. Visit http://www.codeplex.com/litwareHR for more information.

Update: the screencast was uploaded to Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=290919

Ron Jacobs published some videos about Litware HR on ARCast.net. You can see Gianpaolo Carraro and Fred Chong introducing the application and showing the main architecture aspects:

• Introduction on SaaS and LitwareHR approach: http://www.skyscrapr.net/blogs/arcasttv/archive/2007/02/13/746.aspx
• Demo and architecture breakdown part 1 (Tenant Provisioning + Presentation Configuration): http://www.skyscrapr.net/blogs/arcasttv/archive/2007/02/15/759.aspx
• Update (2007/02/20) Demo and architecture breakdown part 2 (Datamodel + Business Process Configuration): http://www.skyscrapr.net/blogs/arcasttv/archive/2007/02/20/774.aspx

Want to see more? Take a look at Litware HR's community site: http://www.codeplex.com/litwarehr

I’m proud to announce that Litware HR, the SaaS reference implementation application is now live at codeplex. This web application is inspired in a Human Resource System and shows features common to any SaaS application.

We focused in covering technical challenges such as tenant provisioning, UI configuration, Workflow configuration and datamodel configuration.

The result?

Check the following:

• Codeplex Community [discussions + issues reporting + new features proposing + releases]:
•  http://www.codeplex.com/LitwareHR
• Msdn [Code + Documentation + Webcasts]:
•  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb229292.aspx
• SkyScrapr [behind the scenes videos]:
•  http://www.skyscrapr.net/architects-in-action.aspx

See you on http://www.codeplex.com/LitwareHR !!!

The process?

The work of the last months got summarized the moment we hit the “publish this project” button at Codeplex. Discussions, blackboards diagrams, standup meetings, conf. call meetings, video shootings, development hours…it all came together in a “single instance” when hitting that button.

Let me share with you some of that moments…

Videoshooting in MSFT HQ at Redmond with Gianpaolo and Fred:

Some Architecture Drawings on Gianpaolo’s blackboard:

Lab testing with Ezequiel Bella in Southworks HQ:

Video shooting in Southworks HQ:

Sync up meeting with the team:

Minutes before shipping…: