"Report Abuse" on Microsoft's Messenger E-Mail Service

This is great ! its the time to get serious about child pornography, i hope that this gets implemented in non-UK versions also but the only thing i am worried about is misuse. i am not sure how the misuse of this service will be monitered. Although its not very difficult to do but it may mean that the person clicking the may needs to be fully authenticated..how ? no ideas ? let see how it works !..see the full news below ..

In the UK, Microsoft has teamed up with a government-backed agency to help protect users of Windows Live Messenger against potential predators and other deviants. A new icon, "report abuse," will be implemented into the messenger for users to press to connect directly with authorities to report suspicious chatters. In an attempt to protect the 11 million users of the service from potential abusers, the software giant has struck up a partnership with the UK government-backed Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre. Microsoft will add a "report abuse" icon to Messenger that will link any users worried about their anonymous internet buddies directly to online police services. Set up earlier this year to provide a single point of contact for the public, law enforcers and the communications industry to report the targeting of children online, CEOP offers advice and information to parents and potential victims of abuse and works with police forces around the world to protect children. "This is part of our 'safer by design' plan and strategy which is designed to make predators have a lack of confidence because of what is going on behind the scenes while they are online," said Jim Gamble, the chief executive of CEOP. "This is a landmark step by Microsoft. They could have got £20,000 in ad revenue for the space they have given up to ensure a higher level of user safety and we hope others will follow them." More refrences on http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1855921,00.html

read more | digg story

Lets Fight With Piracy !

Microsoft website offers a "Complimentary Windows Genuine Advantage Kit" in exchange for your pirated Windows CD and the name of the place you bought it from.

But you know not everybody takes things in good sprit I just checked a comment about this in digg the only words i had were "Again ! the same whatever-ms-does-is-bad ! comeon, think before you speak ! if MS would have offered "Complimentary Windows Genuine Advantage Kit" in exchage of your "home-made Verbatim CD with the hand-written serial number" you can easily produce a few hundred pirated CDs got get a few hundred licences !" do you think otherwise ?

read more | digg story

Welcome Windows Live Writer !!

Sorry guys i had to keep my mouth shut for many days...!  actually since a month (i guess ) i was blogging using dogfood builds of the cool new product from Microsoft..Windows..Live ..Writer ..!  no ..don't get confussed its not only for using with windows live, it supports most of the comman blogging formats like atom api, metaweblog api etc. and most important thing is .. its very cost effective..yeah free..!!! you heard it right !!!! (and we are not bundling it with our OS so ..;) don't cry )

I know your next question is why ? when Word 2007 already has that capibility .. why are we giving out two products with the same intension ..no we are not doing it .. both are for different people.. if you use Word 2007 very often ..then you can use word for blogging but if you don't use it please don't buy word just for blogging ..(unless you are habitual of buying a AK - 47 for killing birds :) )

so the download link for live writer is http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/9/a/f9a19f2d-cec4-4a25-9b0b-eb9655ea7561/Writer.msi  if you want to know more about it you can check the page of windows live writer team blog http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com  below is a pic..and if you are thinking about the right hand insert pane..yes you are right ! windows live writer comes with an SDK so that you can extend it to do whatever (you know i don't actually mean whatever ) you want !

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Journalist Admits Fabricating Interviews

A Norwegian journalist has admitted he fabricated interviews with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and talk show host Oprah Winfrey, media reports said Monday.

read more | digg story

Add Your Own Maps !!!

Believe it or not now you can add your own maps to Virtual Earth, at least I always wanted to do this, whenever I was limited views of my native place I always thought , why don't they ask real people for the detailed maps ? and finally they did it ..!! Well I know ..innovation is nothing new for Microsoft Research .. but wow guys thanks ..I like it !!

Have you ever looked at satellite photos of a building in Virtual Earth -- and wished you could zoom right in and see its floorplan? Have you ever used VE to plan a trip across town -- and wanted to seamlessly switch from its road maps to maps of bicycle trails, bus routes, or carpool lanes? Have you ever wanted to create and publish your own map mashups -- and wished you had a tool to make it easy to integrate a map you care about into Virtual Earth? With MapCruncher, you can!  

The Virtual Earth API allows web developers to supplement Virtual Earth's maps with pushpins and lines. MapCruncher brings mashups to a whole new level by allowing developers to import entire maps to supplement the existing road and aerial imagery with detailed, application-specific information. The possibilities are endless: bicycle maps, transit maps, national park maps, university maps, antique city maps, or whatever drawn-to-scale maps you personally find interesting. You can even augment Virtual Earth with Do-It-Yourself Aerial Photography. See our Gallery for more examples.

 
 

Inserted from <http://research.microsoft.com/mapcruncher/>

Ash Again..!!!

The most beautiful woman in the world

 
 

 

I know you will say what's so bit about it , the bigger thing is the international repo that ash has got ..! I picked up the following text from one of the famous blogs www.britboyla.com . have a look at the link below it has a few more picks ;) I know it's never enough to see ash pics… I have only one statement for Ash "You Are The Personification Of Indian Pride"

Indian actress Aishwarya Rai, widely acknowledged as the most beautiful woman in the world, was in Cannes this week promoting her new movie...but who cares? Who cares about anything except looking at her?? 

She is literally PERFECT 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that she is not just the most beautiful woman in the world but the MOST BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING EVER IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE IN THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING EVER... 

And if you disagree you are clearly mentally ill, on hallucinogenic drugs or an idiot.

And again as you know geek I always a geek .. I cannot finish my post without giving you some geeky tip, so here it goes.. doing this post was pretty easy I used OneNote word and IE 7 for doing this post.. I was just roaming on the web and saw the above post. And I knew copying pasting is problematic and if I add into favorites I will forget it afterwards blog.

So I selected half of the post clicked on send to onenote button, the selected part was moved into one note..and the onenote window was opened I right clicked on it and then clicked BlogThis ..and in a snap everything is in Word 2007 .. and now I will click blog.. Thank Office 2007 Team ..We All Love You..!

 
 

Inserted from http://britboyla.blogspot.com/2006/05/britboy-in-new-york-times.html

Microsoft Office Beta - 2 Is Available !!

Great News !!! Microsoft Office Beta 2 is available for public review, wow I am so happy ..let me try to count the endless list of things that you can do now ..!!!

• You can try the new ribbon UI, really it makes live easier ..
  
• You can blog using the new blog feature of Word.
  
• You can try new XML based extensibility modal, most add-in related plumbing is gone
  
• Use the new OneNote note sharing feature.
  
• Use OneNote BlogsThis feature.
  
• Try SmartArt.
  
• …. And so on ….
  

So how do you download it ..? good question to download it go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx

Blogging With Word 2007

One of the greatest advantages of working with Microsoft is Dog-Fooding, getting the hands on the technology before it actually comes out in the market, I really enjoy that and now as I already told you Beta 2 Word 2007 now has blogging that as a new feature.

Yes, I agree it’s a beta, it still has areas of improvement, but the important point is, product team, is working interactively with the dogfooders , in fact Joe, Krista jumps almost in every mail that you send to word blogging DL (it's a special DL in which all the MS bloggers who are blogging using word are members ) and also he keeps on monitoring his previous posts on word blogging for issues and questions and gets back when / as he has a good number of questions and ofcourse answers to them. Have a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/archive/2006/05/18/600710.aspx

In general, I prefer to sit back and watch the comments come in and respond to them in future blog posts. This means that some folks have to learn a little about delayed gratification. However, no one needs to worry about missing important information that only gets mentioned in the comment stream. So, here are a few answers to issues raised by recent comments.

Once we raise an issue , we will see mails bombing from the entire team, Joe, Krista, Natalie, David, and many more in the team, if required they will actually have live meeting with you, will remote debug the issue and give you the results, its wonderfull working with people with such great commitments towards what they do.

 

 

Being In Microsoft - 2

This is the continuation of my post "Being In Microsoft - 1" actually when I started writing my previous post I was going to tell you things in Microsoft that make me proud that I am the part of such a company , but somewhere along the way, I got distracted from the main topic. In this post I will try my best not do get distracted, but before that let me tell you one more interesting thing that reinforced my thought of being in Microsoft.

Reinforcement Of Thought

When I was learning implementing COM using VB, I came across a book by Dan Appleman. If you have ever read his book the only thing you can say is he can never improve, because its hard to improve perfection (by the way if you were his blog reader a good news for you is he restarted blogging, thank Jeff Atwood for that ). Apart from COM I read a few more interesting incidents in his book. Here I am presenting one specific incident from his book that reinforced my thought of joining Microsoft, In his own words.

When people ask me how do you feel working with the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. Microsoft) , I tell them Microsoft is not the biggest fish in the pond; it’s the pond.

So yes, it’s the pond..!

Although I have many experiences in Microsoft in these 2 years of job, that I can dedicate an entire website with those, but to keep it simple, I will tell you the latest one.

Experience Of Support

Generally when I talk of support I talk of support that I we (our team or other teams in developer support) give to our customers, but this time the story was different I was asking for support.

Yesterday I checked that RSS feeds on my MSDN blog were not working, so I promptly wrote a mail to msdn blogs support and I went to sleep, I was expecting a reply in a couple of days as it was a weekend, but after a few hrs maybe three when I checked my mailbox , there was a mail from Jana, who is working in Microsoft communities(she is in Microsoft even before I started dreaming of Microsoft , yes more then 7 years) and the issue was resolved !! on a weekend ! in a few hrs.

When she read the mail , she immediately escalated the issue to telligent, the community server people (in case you don't know MSDN Blogs is hosted on community server) and even the support guy also started working on it even though it was a weekend, and issue was resolved..!!

Thanks Jana .. Thanks Microsoft ..Thanks Dan ..Thanks Jeff ..Thanks everybody who is associated with Microsoft in any capacity.

Being In Microsoft - 1

People keep on asking me how it feels being in Microsoft . Actually it's hard to explain because my limited vocabulary doesn't have so many good words tom match my feelings ! but the good thing is I always have a pack of incidents which explain why I am proud being a part of Microsoft.

Let wander through history, don’t let me scare you I am not talking about history of mankind or history of universe, I am talking about history of a small micron in the universe and that’s me..

My First Love With Microsoft

This begun back in '99 exactly around the time when Jana Carter joined Microsoft (I will tell how Jana came in my mind latter in this article in the next article ). I must admit that it had nothing to do with actually the company, but it had to do with idea.. it was the time when people started to talk about .NET and comparing .NET to Java, and ofcourse everybody on earth likes to predict things based on their opinion, I found out whenever anybody said anything bad about .NET I was not able to stand ..reason unknown, I didn't even know exactly what's .NET ! strange ..isn't it ? It was at least for me. Then I started examining my thoughts like psychoanalyst would do and when I found the root cause it was actually the love for a specific language "Visual Basic 6.0".

Why I liked the language .. ? Yes , you are right.. it's simplicity. But when you carefully analyze the language you will see that almost every redundant thing was made easy and code-free, so the developer did not have to waste his / her precious time, thinking about window handles, positioning, message loop etc. and if you needed more control API was always there to your rescue.

Dream Of Being A Part Of Microsoft

When anti-piracy thing was going on in our city I happened to meet with one of the people, whose name I don't remember as per now, but he was an MS employee and somehow associated with anti-piracy. I bump into him in a coffee shop. After a round of coffee, he gave me his card and after taking that card in my hand I started imagining my name printed on that card and finally it did happen, although I did take around 6 yrs of efforts but it's worth it. I wanted to say a few things more but I personally do not like too read too big articles so I avoid posting it as well, I will be posting rest of it in an hr with the title "Being In Microsoft - 2 "

Want me to blog on your tune..??

Just a new experimental idea .. I am starting to blog on your issues !! ofcourse they should be related to Office Automation or InfoPath.. so how to you tell me what to blog..good question.. I just created a channel9 wiki that will help you do it ..let's hope it doesn't get removed from there !

The URL of the entry is http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/wikiedit.aspx?topic=Channel9.BlogRequest&return=Channel9.OfficeDevelopmentBlogs just login and let me know what you want and in most cases you will get it done..!! and I will ofcourse I will blog it on This Blog not on Blogspot or Spaces Blog

Strange Times..

What do you call a strange time..? I can tell you my definition because I am going through ..the basic reason is something I know but unfortunately cannot post here because my blog readers are known's and unknown's. I don't have issues sharing everything ( well almost ..everything) . but ofcourse I cannot share everything with known's , did you ever feel the same things in your life..? it's strange.. when you are ready to share anything and everything with the world but not with the people you know..

My schedule ..my day is going haywire..can you believe I am generally in office for more than 38 hrs generally ..? then even if I go home..(the so called..my definition of home is simple ..a place where somebody is waiting for you ..and this doesn't happen in my home ) I will be doing something like mabe watching TV for some time..if possible I will take a rest for around 1 hrs 20 mins or 30 mins at most, will take bath and then will be back in the office..etc. in office after my job if I sleep ..it's so relaxing that I sleep for no less then 12 hrs..today was a weekend and I was sleeping in my office and I slept for 19 hrs.. hehe

brrreeeport

Now what's this ..? think of brrreeeport as a new kind of experiment , to compare search engines and more importantly to see the power of blogosphere! Maybe I am late(3 months 5 days 23 hrs and 27 minutes to be exact ) in joining but better late than never.
The only advantage of being late is now I have more data that can be used for a basic analysis, although an advanced analysis will need more data ..but IMHO it will be better to reinforce "brrreeeport" , after every few posts ..are you reading me Scoble ?
So the current data is .
Google Web Search 112000
Google Blog Search 1628
Technorati Search 2408
Yahoo Search 63300
MSN Search 13723
Windows Live Search 18830
Windows Live Feed Search 461
And needless to add I am blogging using Office 2007 Cool Blog Feature… hey Scoble which editor do you use ..? also as an FYI i am adding this to all of my blogs..in case you don't know its:
http://blogs.msdn.com/pranavwagh
http://pranavwagh.blogspot.com/
http://spaces.msn.com/pranavwagh

Vagus Starts Blogging

It gives me immense pleasure to introduce my friend, actually I should not be telling his name ..so be it vagus , as he tells you on the blogosphere, yesterday I came to know that he started blogging ! well .. we thought you will never do it vv..agus .

The initial posts that I see are well great .. and surely I did not know what vagus means until I saw Hello World . Make sure to stop by in case you would like to see a blog becoming more and more technical day by day but still keeping the originality

Maybe this week is not good for me

So question is why ? can we actually blame a week for something going wrong ..? well that’s a philosophical question and I am no philosopher .. but what I understand from the human mentality is we tend to release our pain..problems ..issue..and everything bad that happens to us by blaming somebody. It could be some other human being, a specific day a specific month, a specific week , god or anything and everything.

So all said and done..today is the week's turn..! this week I got stuck in many cases.. at places where I never did before, met with an accident, one of my friends had a broke up, one of my friends ran from home, and his boyfriend is not ready to marry at this point of time as he is planning to move to London. Then one of my newest friends was fired from her job, where she was working since 2-3 years.

Last but not the least today my onenote 2007's blogthis feature stopped working magically, then when we had a debugging session, finally came to know that somehow word 2003 overrode some of the word 2007 features, so the basic problem here was I am running an almost not recommended configuration. Then i had to pull the old rabbit out of the hat, that is go to add-remove programs , select office 2007 select change, select add-remove, don’t change anything and say next. It will redo the configurations, whew done.

I don't know why life doesn't have registry so that we can hack it to makes things work.. good concept isn't it..?

Published New Article

Published new article..about ways, and issues associated with using ADO with excel, initially I published it as a post and then removed it from there, and hey mike..(in case you don't know this gentleman gave a comment to that post "what a useless post") maybe it’s a useless post if you look at it isolated but I will tell you when it becomes very important (we call it Sev A).

Actually Server Side Automation Of Office of excel and other office applications is something that many people use but unfortunately as office was made for interactive usage. Server Side Automation is not a recommended or even supported approach. Now if you have a excel application that automates excel on the server side(you made it because you never knew about the issues associated with it). And then you come to know that this is a bad approach what do you do ..?? in *many* cases the only approach left is using ADO to pull the data out of excel and to put the data out of excel ..hence the post.

Btw the URL of the post is http://blogs.msdn.com/pranavwagh/articles/excel_ado.aspx and mike you are again welcome to do the comments ;)

Things to remember while designing a VSTO 2005 project.

Programmatic Limitations of Host Controls

l       For each host item and host control there is an underlying native Word or Excel object which can be accessed via the InnerObject property of the host item or host control.  You cannot however, cast a native object to it’s host item or host control.

l       Host items are not created automatically when you create a new document or worksheet at runtime.  For example, if you add a Word document at run time, it will be of the type Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document rather than Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Document.

l       Host controls and Windows Forms controls cannot be added to a native Word document or Excel worksheet, they can only be added to a host item.

l       Most methods and properties of host items return the underlying native Office object upon which the item is based

l       VSTO does not provide individual collections for each type of host control.  For example, it is not possible to enumerate each Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.Bookmark control in the document using the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Bookmarks collection.  You can use the ControlCollection to iterate through all controls (host controls and Windows Forms controls) on the document and then look for items that match the type of host control that you are interested in

l       In Microsoft Word, you can pass a host control to a method or property that requires a native Word object for which there is a corresponding host control.  However, in Excel, you must pass the native Office object rather than the corresponding host control.  You can use the InnerObject property of the host control to pass the native Office object

l       If a user deletes or cuts a control from the document at run time, the control cannot be restored by using the Undo or Paste methods.  The Undo and Paste operations will add the underlying native Office object back to the document, but the object is no longer a host control.

 

Managed Windows Forms Controls

l       Controls can be added either manually or programmatically

l       Controls can be added to a Windows form, the actions pane, or directly on the document.

l       Windows Forms controls are not supported inside of a header or footer, or within a subdocument.

 

The following controls and components are not available in the Toolbox and are not supported for use on documents in VSTO 2005:

l       BindingNavigator

l       ContextMenuStrip

l       CrystalReportViewer

l       DataGrid

l       DirectoryEntry

l       DirectorySearcher

l       ErrorProvider

l       EventLog

l       FileSystemWatcher

l       FlowLayoutPanel

l       GroupBox

l       MainMenu

l       MenuStrip

l       MessageQueue

l       NotifyIcon

l       PageSetupDialog

l       Panel

l       PerformanceCounter

l       PrintDialog

l       PrintDocument

l       PrintPreviewControl

l       Process

l       RichTextBox

l       SerialPort

l       ServiceController

l       SplitContainer

l       Splitter

l       StatusBar

l       StatusStrip

l       TabControl

l       TableLayoutPanel

l       System.Timers.Timer

l       System.Windows.Forms.Timer

l       ToolBar

l       ToolStrip

l       ToolStripContainer

l       ToolStripDropDown

l       ToolStripDropDownMenu

l       ToolStripPanel

 

 

Unsupported methods and properties of Word controls

l       Hide

l       Show

l       Anchor

l       Dock

l       Location

l       TabIndex

l       TabStop

l       TopLevelControl

l       Visible

 

Unsupported methods and properties of Excel controls

l       Anchor

l       Dock

l       Location

l       TabIndex

l       TabStop

l       TopLevelControl

 

 

 

 

 

Installation Requirements for VSTO 2005

Installation Requirements for the Development System

l       One of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System Software Editions or Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office

l       One of the following editions of Microsoft Office 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later.

l       Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Excel 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Word 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 Trial.

l       Microsoft Office System Evaluation 2003 Enterprise Edition.

l       The Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs), installed in the Windows global assembly cache (GAC).

l       Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) must be installed as part of Office.

 

Installation Requirements for the Client System

l       Microsoft .NET Framework, version 2.0

l       Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office runtime

l       One of the following editions of Microsoft Office 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later

l       Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Excel 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Word 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.

l       Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 Trial.

l       Microsoft Office System Evaluation 2003 Enterprise Edition.

l       The Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs), installed in the Windows global assembly cache (GAC).

l       Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) must be installed as part of Office.

l       The appropriate security policies.

Stuck In A Question ..!!!

Stuck on a question!! can otkperst.dll can be redistributed, as its persistence control some guys are using it in their app and want to redistribute it I saw a blog http://www.kintespace.com/rasxlog/?p=217  that talks about the same thing, so now it’s a contest…..give your suggestionand win(??) your name on my three blogs  MSN, MSDN & Blogspot, I will even try to put your name on my bloglines one if I do manage to remember the password…J  

Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005

"Refactor! takes an innovative approach to refactoring that complements the Visual Basic development style. We're excited to make their solution available to Visual Basic 2005 developers."

Rob Copeland, Visual Basic Product Unit Manager

 

Simplify Your Visual Basic Code

More and more developers are recognizing that simple, easy-to-read code is the key to application flexibility and easy maintenance. Managers are realizing that easy maintenance means low cost maintenance. If you know in your heart that parts of your code base could be better, but uncertainty about maintenance cost or concerns over breaking code have kept you from cleaning up your house, then Refactor! is for you. Refactor vaporizes barriers to code simplification, dramatically reducing the cost traditionally associated with improving, simplifying, and refactoring existing code.

                  To perform an extract method, just select the block of code you want to extract, and press the Refactor Key.

                  To reorder parameters, place the cursor on the type of the parameter and press the Refactor Key.

                  To create a method overload, place the cursor at the start of the method declaration and press the Refactor Key.

                  To reverse a conditional or replace a nested conditional with a guard clause, place the cursor on the "if" keyword and press the Refactor Key.

No other code simplification and refactoring tool is able to provide so much functionality with just one key. Refactor is the only refactoring and code simplification tool with one-key refactoring.

 

 

What's in Visual Basic 2005 for the Visual Basic 6.0 Developer

I admit that when I tried to create my first VB.NET application I wasn’t that comfortable, and when I tried to convert my VB 6.0 application in VB.NET, the upgrade wizard failed for even the simplest things, I always missed old VB, but now it seems that the world is changing with VB .NET 2005 read on in the words of Scott Swigart  the complete stuff is on http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/VB05forVB6.asp

 

“

I Haven't Needed .NET for Anything so Far...

The Microsoft Hype Machine has already started turning up the volume on Visual Studio 2005. The question is, if you work primarily in Visual Basic 6, you're happy with Visual Basic 6, and you've looked at .NET and not found anything you really need, should you even care about this new release of Visual Studio 2005? Considering that MSDN has been nice enough to host this article, you can probably guess the conclusion that I've reached. But bear with me, there are some great things coming for the Visual Basic 6 developer.

First of all, let's just admit that for many of us, Visual Basic .NET left something to be desired. If you think back to when Microsoft unleashed .NET on the world, the megaphone was blaring only two things: Web Service and C#. Well, many of us Visual Basic 6 developers, didn't need (or even want) Web Services. And, we weren't really interested in learning this new C# language when we already had a good language. After Web Services and C#, the other thing that Microsoft was blaring was ASP.NET. While many of us do some Web development, lots of Visual Basic 6 developers are primarily interested in desktop applications, so if .NET was all about Web Services, C#, and ASP.NET, then Microsoft should understand if many of us did not find anything in .NET that we couldn't live without.

Finally, let's just say that Visual Basic .NET wasn't 100 percent compatible with Visual Basic 6. This made it non-trivial to move a Visual Basic 6 application to .NET, assuming that I wanted to.

 

”   

Accessing database in a secured way from InfoPath ?

The real issue which exists here is, InfoPath xsn file is a combination of XML files with is finally nothing but something that is very readable, so even if you create a secured database, and in the connection string you provide the user name & password; its stored in the XML file...!!! fully readable ..so please don’t do it.. unless you really want to expose your username & password.

The only(easier) possible workaround(yes; workaround !)  is to use a web service which runs in the context of a specific user, give the permissions to this user on your database  and then you can create a InfoPath form with accesses the webservice ...but the point is . xsn file will still reveal the server name where the webservice is situated..so its upto you if you dont mind you can go ahead & do it..

The other way is use the .NET code behind use ADO.NET to access the data and updata the xml nodes in Infopath programmatically..its offcourse secure ..but you have to give full trust to the IP form in order to allow it to execute....moreover...if you need to do all this just make sure you really need InfoPath :) may be the tool that you really need is ASP.NET have a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odc_ip2003_ta/html/odc_IPInfoPathDecisionTree02.gif  if you are confused. Also have a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dno2k3ta/html/Office2003OverviewDeveloperTechnologies.asp 

myPic

Bad Experiences with Citybank..!

I had some (?) bad experiences with Citibank just wanted let me know if you agree, or if you have some things to add to it. As you people know that I had a couple of vacations I spent almost all of my money over there just approx 6000 was left in my account. I knew that as I gave ECS to citi credit cards and their date is 20 so they are gonna deduct that amount from my account, I expected that amount to be slightly less then the mount in my bank, to complicate the matters I already gave a check of 666 to airtel that they were gonna put on 20(I had one very bad experience with airetel as well but I will talk about it in the next blog), off course I did not wanted my check to bounce so I called citi bank to confirm how much amount exactly I have in my account and how much city cards is gonna deduct I did not have my TPIN so I verified my DOB,  Billing address & last few transactions he gave me all the information, Done…! Then after some time I thought of an idea that I don’t I make a stop payment on the check so I again called citi bank and asked him about the check number I gave to airtel ….SURPRIZE  !! he says  he can not disclose the personal information, imagine how idiotic is that just in the previous call he told me how much money I have in my account, how much citi cards is gonna deduct..! I asked him what is the definition of personal information and one more SURPRIZE ..he disconnected the call… gosh this is really impossible to believe …. Then I again called and asked him to give me my HPIN(personal identification number to access the Hinternet(;))) he said that can not be given unless I have TPIN !! so the procedure is first request for TPIN then use TPIN to call customer support then they will take a request for HPIN ..

You know something I bet they like to complicate things… !!!.