Economics of Cloud Computing

Microsoft Cloud Platform

https://cid-9e034ec670871f31.skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?resid=9E034EC670871F31!461

What are we trying to achieve with Private Clouds

There are different names but I like to use the name Dynamic Datacenter where the workflows around provisioning and deprovisioning IT resources to user are automated. The main use case is somebody who needs computational resources for its projects sends a request to the IT department. There is a demand management workflow and once approved the provisioning of the infrastructure is scheduled based on the timings given at the request. After the infrastructure is provisioned it is handed over to the user. After the project is decommissioned, the hardware is deprovisioned. Sounds simple but the real processes can get really ugly even in organizations of decent size and complexity. The budgeting cycle, cost cutting concerns, internal politics, lifecycle of hardware and refresh cycles, logistics all add complexity to the process of allocating the needed resources on time which is the main promise of dynamic datacenters.

A Brief History on Public Clouds

This is not a new concept at all, xSP’s has been following this approach since a long time and there are well established product families called Control Panels. Especially after the virtual servers replacing physical hardware the automated provisioning became more of a software problem. xSP’s dump the hardware on the racks based on well known capacity planning techniques and turn them on for running virtualized workloads hence isolating the logistics from provisioning. Moreover with the big players building multi Billion USD investments on datacenters, the hardware pool simply becomes and infinite resource.

Key Differences between Public and Private Clouds

Although both are termed as clouds and the result that they’re trying to achieve are similar, there are key differences between public and private clouds. If these differences are not understood and tackled properly, there’s a great risk of failure for dynamic datacenter initiatives. Key characteristics of private clouds which are different from public clouds are:

Private Clouds Have Limited Resources

The hardware resources in public clouds are located at the organization’s datacenter. No matter how big and complex the data centers are they are still limited in size, power, rack space, cooling, number and types of servers, operations personnel, processes and tools when compared with the resources in public clouds which are located at the massive datacenters. Nowadays with the entrance of the IT titans investing billions of U.S. dollars yearly it can easily be assume that the pubic clouds have unlimited resources when compared with the public datacenters. Moreover the mature operational processes, advanced automation tools and the highly optimized and cost effective procurement and logistics dramatically reduces the the time to deploy new resources. This level of operations optimization could only be achieved by public cloud operators because it is their business while IT is a support function on all other businesses.

Private Clouds Should Support More Diverse Roles

Public Cloud offerings only support a limited set of roles and configurations. For example Microsoft Azure has Worker, Web Server, Database and the newly introduced HPC roles. Whereas in private clouds, there will be a diverse set of server roles that needs to be supported based on the organization’s needs. The ability to support different and configurable set of roles is delivered by the usage of templates. At the beginning an organization may decide to support only a limited set of roles and let the server owners do the configuration and support of additional software, however in the long run this might cause availability and supportability issues.

Scheduled Provisioning

Nowadays getting a service from the public cloud vendors takes minutes. We give our credit card details, provide the roles and the number of instances and the virtual servers are provisioned and handed over to us in minutes. As long as we’re OK with paying for the servers, they keep on running. The illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand, thereby eliminating the need for Cloud Computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning.

The model is very different with the private clouds. First thing the IT department will ask when you request a new server is did you budget for the server. Or if it is for a temporary need, when you need it and until which date. Since the resources are limited, the operations department needs a allocate resources based on a schedule and decommission as soon as the need is ended in order to allocate to other requests. The demand is evaluated based on the availability of datacenter resources and scheduled to be provisioned at a future date. Enterprises usually have very bureaucratic budgeting processes and logistics takes a long time. My other personal observation is since most of the IT organizations are seen as cost centers cost cutting initiatives puts additional pressures on the virtualization projects. Usually the expectation from private cloud infrastructures is a reduction in costs which puts further cuts to the initial hardware budgeting.

A private cloud management toolkit should provide a scheduling engine where resources are assigned based on request timeframes and availability. When the resource is available, the scheduling engine should automatically provision the resources and inform the requestor on the availability. Scheduling engine should also have a prioritization mechanism to prefer high importance requests.

Complex Provisioning Workflows

Unless it is a customized offering, the provisioning for the Public cloud offerings is very simple, ask for the service, pay the money and start using. The story is different in the private clouds, which needs a full demand management solution. The process should ideally start with the budgeting request. Once the resources are procured they should be allocated to the requester as a virtual infrastructure. The requester should create any request in the context of this virtual infrastructure and the system should communicate back with the availability of the requested resources before starting the approval process. The system should provide monitoring capabilities for the workflow status, customizable workflows and configurable feedback and alerting mechanisms to end users.

Perception of being “Free”

For the IT services organizations that don’t adopt a chargeback mechanism, the computing resources are perceived as being “free” especially by the end user. If you have an important project you ask from the IT to provide you with the resources. Especially if the request is for a high visibility project that has a powerful sponsor that has access to the CxO. The user asks for the resources and want IT to provision. This again puts additional stress on the IT.

A private cloud management toolkit should have a very detailed reporting and dashboard infrastructure. This will provide the information to the end user on the availability of resources before requesting and the current usage of the user. Another important feature is the validation of resources before even starting the demand management workflow. Before submitting a request, a user should be warned on the availability of the requested resources and the nearest time of availability if currently not available.  

Expiration Policies

Lastly expiration in public clouds only happens when you forget to pay. Setting expiration policies based on time or possibly other rules is of vital importance for managing private clouds. There should be a complex workflow where the end user should be warned at different timeframes before the expiration and should be given the chance to extend the usage by kicking off an approval workflow. The expiration policy engine should be customizable and support actions such as archiving the virtual machines before de-provisioning.

"Business Architecture describes the development of a Business Architecture to support an agreed Architecture Vision"

In simple terms we model the existing Business Architecture, we plan for the future i.e. design the Target Business Architecture and do a Gap Analysis. In the future phases of the ADM we do a transition plan to move from the exsiting to target business architectures. The TOGAF guys will hate me for taking this in such a simple way, however the principle is as simple as this and in fact this is the way we operate as IT Architects. Our role is being change agents to improve the way IT works for better business outcomes.

Before going forward, I have a simple question:

"While working on an Enterprise Architecture project, have you thought about what "Designing the Target Business Architecture" means?"

Let me give you again a simple answer (as you might have understood by now that I like simplicity as "unnecessary complexity is the mother of all evil". Number 1 task of an IT Architect is to eliminate the unnnecessary complexity in solutions. Deciding on what is necessary and what is unnecessary is a more of an art rather than a science. What makes us good IT architects is our capability to define the "necessary complexities")

Designing the Target State Business Architecture in reality means deciding on how the enterprise does business. As an IT Architect we need put ourselves in the shoes of the CEO and make decisions on how the business will work, what are the strategies, how is the enterprise operated, what are the tactics, etc... etc... 

Should Enterprise Architecture be responsible for defining how the organization does business, probably not.  

Should Enterprise Architecture not care about the business architecture and concentrate on IT, definitely not.

So what shall we do? Here's an approach I would like introduce:

• Conduct a Business Capability Assesment (Microsoft Services Business Architecture, MSBA is very good tool). A Business Capability based approach is very important and let's us concentrate on what the organization should do rather than how it does. Most of the existing processes could be suboptimal while the business capability may be very critical for the organization. Clive Finkelstein explains this as still running our business using the processes that come back from the industrial age which are based on collecting and disseminating information using hardcopy forms. We are just converting the hardcopy forms to eForms but not optimizing the processes. There's a tremendous room for growth by completely changing the processes, i.e. the way we deliver the business capabilities by using the technological advances provided to us by the new IT systems i.e. adapting the processes to the information age principles.
• Current State Business Architecture is the organizations' existing business processes, i.e. how the business capabilities are being delivered. Using MSBA we create a "Heat Map" that shows us the two dimensions, which business capabilities are crucial for the organization (a definition of how to measure this could be is this capability a differentiator for the organization, if they deliver this capability very well will their stock price increase) and how does the current business processes perform.
• Easy until now right, we didn't redesign any business process, we didn't have any discussions with the CxO's and had to talk in different language which we don't understand (I personally don't like to discuss the Hurdle Rate)? This step is very important. Most organizations, at least the ones which are large enough to consider an enteprise architecture engagement, have a very good idea on where they are heading, they have clear business strategies and an operation plan to execute these strategies. In this step you need to do a Strategy Workshop to understand where the business is targetting, hence get the "Target State Business Architecture" from the Business Designers and map them to Business Capabilities. An Enterprise Architect has two important roles in this exercise. First is to get the Business Targets and document the Target Business Architecture based on the input from the business. Second to introduce ideas on how IT can help in optimizing the business process and what needs to be changed and work with the business owners to get their organization's approval and be part of the change management process. A very solid methodology is introduced and practiced by Clive Finkelstein where he starts the Enterprise Architecture Project from Business Motivation, Row 1 Column 6 of Zachman Framework. I highly recommend reading the first four chapters of his book which explains in great details on how this is done, he calls this Strategy Analysis and has a very well structured engagement model with well defined deliverables and timing. The activity starts with background research of the company business plan, a multi day workshop with all managers in the room and a report generation phase where a blueprint document is created and presented.
• Now it's easy we have the Current and Target State Business Architectures we do Gap Analysis and move forward with the implementation.

My experience shows that an Enterprise Architecture project can serve a lot in optimizing the business processes and guiding them on how IT can change the way they make business and even introduce new way of implementing business capabilities which were not possible before.

As Enterprise Architects our role is to convince the business owners to think of IT as part of the Growth Strategy, not as part of Operations Excellence where IT is seen as a cost center and is managed to reduce cost and minimize risk.

The first step for configuring SAP MA on FIM 2010 server is running ERP MA Configuration tool. However you may get following message:

Neither SAP nor PeopleSoft client libraries have been detected on this machine. The application cannot continue.

When you read MA requirements, you will find note that it requires SAP .NET Connector 2.0 installed in the system in order to run this tool. What if I don't want to install Visual Studio 2003 on my production machine just to install 3 dlls. In the ERPMA help file it says you need to copy the files SAP.Connector.dll, SAP.Connector.Rfc and librfc32.dll.

Copy where and how?

Here's the step by step procedure to make it work:

1- Expand the SAP.NET Connector msi files using the command line msiexec /a PathToMSIFile /qb TARGETDIR=DirectoryToExtractTo

2- On the FIM 2010 machine copy SAP.Connector.dll and SAP.Connector.Rfc.dll to the directory  c:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager\2010\Synchronization Service\UIShell\ERPMA

3- Since you'll be intalling FIM 2010 on a 64Bit machine, copy librfc32.dll under c:\Windows\SysWOW64 and run regsvr32.exe librfc32.dll under this directory.

However enterprise architecture is all about the enterprise as a whole. The "thing" you're modelling is the enterprise itself. Which brings the question, who is more close to being an enterprise architect, is it the team who builds the strategy maps, organizational structures, balanced scorecards and KPI metrics or is it the IT people who claim to be enterprise archiectects looking at the row 6 in Zachman Classification who build and deliver IT solutions? Or do we need people who understands both, but is this possible? I do strongly beleive that the role definition and the skills of an Enterprise Architect is something we need to clarify in the next decade.

1- Public Cloud vendors are making plans to downscale their cloud based infrastructures and make them products. Enterprises can benefit from the experiences that the vendors put into these ultrascalable and ultrasecure infrastructures on their very datacenters.

 2- The word private cloud is the materialization of the cry of the end user. The biggest dream of every organization is to deliver the IT Services to all organizations by clear SLA's. Here the end user doesn't get involved with the internals of the IT organization but they receive the service with the requested qualities. One of the major area of frustration is the IT & Business alignment. There are hundreds if not thousands of book published in this area and still it is a problem. The end user expects the services they need to be delivered very quickly which is defined as making IT projects as mass customizations rather then implementations by John Zachman.

Defining the private cloud this way, I want to throw another idea here, the personal cloud. This is also not new, I do have a personal cloud for some time. I have a server at home which is connected to the internet. I can access my personal items and upload / download, VPN into my servers at home, connect to my mesh (www.mesh.com) device ring, devices, faxes, etc...

The moral of the story is clouds are everywhere but instead of riding the buzzword, as an architect I am trying to understand what problems is the cloud pattern trying to resolve especially at the enterprise level. As a last remark I do beleive that Microsoft has a good vision with the S+S strategy.

I dropped all web service definitions and created two instead for the following:

• Z_FLIGHTCUSTOMER_WS : https://<SAP Host Name>:8000/sap/bc/srt/rfc/sap/Z_FLIGHTCUSTOMER_WS?sap-client=000
• Z_FLIGHT_WS : https://<SAP Host Name>:8000/sap/bc/srt/rfc/sap/Z_FLIGHT_WS?sap-client=000

Wait, read the rest, although this is a simple ad web reference or add service reference exercise it doesn’t work as expected:

First and foremost, instead of directing the wizard to the above url, you should get the wsdl and copy it to a local text file. Then you need to do a Ctrl+H (find and replace) job. Do the following

Save the files with a WSDL extension are you’re all set. Point your browser to the file and generate the proxies, don’t forget to change the URL in the web.config pointing to your SAP Server.

Second, once you create your proxies and try connecting to SAP you might get the error “Virtual Interface not found” (I got this with the FLIGHTCUSTOMER web service but other one was working) You keep on wondering what virtualization and what interface, it turns out to be that this related with the SAP side. You can follow the below steps to resolve the issue or ask you SAP administrator for help.

Symptom: The attempted use of an SAP BW query returns a virtual interface not found error: Error 32010: Cannot execute query. No result returned or XML returned in the result contains an error. Virtual Interface not found.

The reason is that the virtual interface … is not activated or needs to be reactivated.

1. Log on to SAP, go to the Object Navigator (Transaction SE80), and click on the Edit Object button.
2. On the Enterprise Services tab, select the Virtual Interface radio button and enter the name of the virtual interface.
3. Click on the Continue icon.
4. In the next screen, click on the Activate button. The Virtual Interface is activated.

Last but not least, if you’re using Add Service Reference and decide using WCF instead of asmx, you should change the binding at the client side after creating the proxy, it doesn’t work with the standard bindings the custom binding that worked for me is below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<configuration>

<system.serviceModel>

<bindings>

<customBinding>

<binding name="Z_Flight_WSSoapBinding">

<textMessageEncoding maxReadPoolSize="64" maxWritePoolSize="16"

messageVersion="Soap11" writeEncoding="utf-8">

<readerQuotas maxDepth="10000000" maxStringContentLength="10000000"

maxArrayLength="67108864" maxBytesPerRead="65536" maxNameTableCharCount="100000" />

</textMessageEncoding>

<httpTransport authenticationScheme="Basic" bypassProxyOnLocal="false"

hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" keepAliveEnabled="false"

proxyAuthenticationScheme="Basic" realm="NSP" useDefaultWebProxy="true" maxReceivedMessageSize="653630" />

</binding>

</customBinding>

</bindings>

<client>

<endpoint address="https://<SAP Host Name>:8000/sap/bc/srt/rfc/sap/Z_FLIGHT_WS?sap-client=000"

binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="Z_Flight_WSSoapBinding"

contract="ServiceReference1.Z_Flight_WS" name="Z_Flight_WSSoapBinding" />

</client>

</system.serviceModel>

</configuration>

I have posted the updated version of SAPBridge web services to the following location https://sapbridge.codeplex.com

Happy Integration projects with SAP.

We are planning to customize the slices for local sites and put the code here for immediate consumption.

Special thanks to Emad Abdelaziz our Silverlight MVP for putting these samples together.

WebSlices have four main behaviors.

• Discovery : users discover webslices in the page and subscribe to it, adding it to the Favorites bar.
• Update : IE8 uses the feed download engine to check for the updates.
• Notify : When WebSlice content is changes it is bolded on the Favorites bar.
• Display : The information displayed on the dropdown area when user clicks the WebSlice on the favorites bar.

I will start with a sample showing how to implement these behaviors.

Discovery

First you need an html page and a DIV tag within the page that will be used a “WebSlice Aware” area.

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="useless" class="hslice">
        <p><span class="entry-title">Useless WebSlice</span></p>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

• id=”useless” : ID for the webslice, should be unique within the page, the ID for this webslice is set to “useless” and it could be set to any value.
• class=”hslice” : defines this div to be webslice aware.
• class=”entry-title” : this entry maps to the WebSlice button text on the favorites bar.

It will be rendered in the page as follows

Hover the mouse over the text and you’ll see the green webslice button

Click the button and dismiss the warning message box, the webslice will be on the favorites bar

Note that nothing happens when you click it as we didn’t define the content yet

Update

When changes occur in the  WebSlice data, IE8 automatically updates.

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="useless" class="hslice">
        <p><span class="entry-title">Less Useless WebSlice</span></p>
        <div class="ttl" style="display:none;">15</div>
        <abbr class="endtime" title="2008-04-29T17:50:00-08:00"></abbr>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

The following tags are used to control the update behavior.

• class=”ttl” : check for updates every 15 minutes
• class=”endtime” : the content for webslice will expire at this time, i.e if you’re checking the availability of a flight, it doesn’t make sense to check after the flight has taken off

We’ll show how it works with a full webslice at the end of this article

Notify

The WebSlice gleams when new data is present

Display

We did all of this to display information to the user, the reason why we did all of the plumbing until now. We have 3 models to display data and depending on the need and information that needs to be displayed, you can do the implementation using pure html. Content is displayed in a small area which drops down when you click the WebSlice in the Favorites bar.

For security reasons, the Web Slice preview does not allow script or Microsoft ActiveX controls. Consequently, HTML forms and buttons are not supported. Instead, you can use links that contain URL parameters to perform related actions. Navigations occur within the currently selected tab. To get around this limitation, consider using an alternative display source, described below.

See Internet Explorer 8 Web Slice Guide for how to design, format and style Web Slices.

Basic

The selected “WebSlice Aware Area (div with class=”hslice”)” in the page is used the define and display the content.

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="useless" class="hslice">
        <div class="entry-content">
            <p><span class="entry-title">Less Useless WebSlice with Useless Content</span></p>
            <img src="images/sunny.png" id="image" style="padding:5px;float:left;" alt="Sunny" height="128" width="128" />
            <div class="entry-title" style="font-size:2.5em;margin-top:24px;font-weight:bold;">70&deg; F</div>
            <p class="entry-title" style="font-weight:bold;font-size:1.5em">Sunny</p>
            <p><i>All fictional, of course!</i></p>
            <p>Current conditions as of 4:56 PM</p>
        </div>
        <div class="ttl" style="display:none;">15</div>
        <abbr class="endtime" title="2008-04-29T17:50:00-08:00"></abbr>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

class=”entry-content” defines the are that will be displayed in the dropdown area.

This is what is rendered.

And this is the content for the WebSlice. Observe that since I didn’t do proper styling and formatting on the WebSlice, it is wide. One thing worth noting is look at the small red circle at the bottom, this indicates that the webslice has expired. Why? (Hint: Check the class=”endtime” at the Notify section above)

Not so interesting? Or simple and serves your needs? Still we didn’t write any single piece of script, code or didn’t use any plugin. It is all html, attributes and elements. If this is all you need, you’re done with your first slice, put it in your web site and enjoy the extra traffic and usage.

Alternative Update Source

You are trying to build a WebSlice where static data is not enough. You want to display the data you get from an RSS feed. Like a simple Tadawul Webslice taht shows the stock market information or a WebSlice for AlRiyadh or AlWatan Newspapers showing the latest news, or your are fan of AlHilal Football Club and want to get the latest information about a match. You can create a webslice and assign the source of the slice to an RSS feed. You have a page to display the WebSlice aware area for discovery, update and notify settings which is named as Basic.html. Second you need the content through an RSS feed.

This is how the Basic.html looks like, click the Green Icon to subscribe

WebSlice “Gleams” on the favorites bar

This is the resulting web slice display, again it doesn’t look nice because of the formatting and lack of style

This is how the code looks like

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <h2>AlRiyadh Newspaper</h2>   
    <div id="weather" class="hslice">
        <h3><span class="entry-title">Riyadh</span>, Breaking News</h3>
        <div class="entry-content">
            <a rel="feedurl" href=https://localhost/WebSlice/Sample.xml></a>
        </div>
</body>
</html>

This is how the Sample.xml looks like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" >
<channel>
<title>جريدة الرياض : تقنية المعلومات</title>
  <link>https://www.alriyadh.com/</link>
  <description>جريدة يومية تصدر عن مؤسسة اليمامة الصحفية</description>
  <language>ar</language>
- <image>
  <title>Riyadh Newspaper</title>
  <url>https://www.alriyadh.com/img/logo.gif</url>
  <link>https://www.alriyadh.com/</link>
  </image>
- <item>
  <link>https://www.alriyadh.com/2009/03/10/article414830.html</link>
  <title>الأمير جلوي يفتتح الملتقى الرابع للخدمات الإلكترونية بالمنطقة الشرقية أكثر من (1000) مشارك يمثلون (60) جهة علمية وفنية وهندسية متخصصة</title>
  <description>
    &lt;div id=&quot;AlRiyadhNews&quot; class=&quot;hslice&quot;&gt;
    &lt;div class=&quot;entry-content&quot;&gt;
    &lt;img src=&quot;https://www.alriyadh.com/img_s/02/02cf8fa515b6ba079a1477129af05ef9_w210_h160.jpg&quot; id=&quot;image&quot;/&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;أكد صاحب السمو الأمير جلوي بن عبدالعزيز بن مساعد نائب أمير المنطقة الشرقية أن العمل جار لايجاد بوابة الكترونية موحدة للمنطقة الشرقية&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;
  </description>
  </item>
</channel>
</rss>

Alternative Display Source 

When user clicks the Web Slice on the Favorites bar, a flyout appears with the stored value of entry-content property which links to a different page which can host content including ActiveX and scripts. My favorite is Silverlight, where you can display appealing content. Download and test the new MSN Toolbar on https://www.newmsntoolbar.com/ which uses Web Slices built on Silverlight technology.

The code for  Basic.html is very very simple

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <h2>AlRiyadh Newspaper</h2>   
    <div id="weather" class="hslice">
        <h3><span class="entry-title">Riyadh</span>, Breaking News</h3>
        <a rel="entry-content" href="https://www.level70.de/silverlight/mcpluscsXS/Default.html"></a>
    </div>   
</body>
</html>

the href for content in this case links to a sample site for Silverlight displaying content. The WebSlice wil open a flyout and show the sample content which could be any Silverlight control which opens up unlimited opportunities. The sample content is displayed as:

Hint: Follow the link on the address bar for the RIA WebSlice article.

Some ideas based on MSN Toolbar:

Displaying Tadawul Data

Newspapers

Sports

We are creating Fully Arabic Silverlight based sample Web Slices and will put them on Codeplex. Please follow the announcements in my blog for the location of the slices.

To get more information on the IE8 Features in general I recommend the MSDN Article New Features To Slice, Store, And Accelerate Your Web Applications.

See Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit

See Internet Explorer 8 Team Blog

1) Create an XML document using the OpenService Format Specification for Accelerators. Here I will only build the basic functionality but the specification is comprehensive in the features that could be implemented. Publish document to your website. I named it TadawulAccelerator.xml and put it under root.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<openServiceDescription xmlns="https://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
  <homepageUrl>https://www.tadawul.com.sa</homepageUrl>
  <display>
    <name>Search Stock Symbol in Tadawul</name>
    <icon>https://www.tadawul.com.sa/favicon.ico</icon>
  </display>
  <activity category="define">
    <activityAction context="selection">
       <preview method="get" action="https://www.tadawul.com.sa/wps/portal/!ut/p/.cmd/cs/.ce/7_0_A/.s/7_0_4A0/_s.7_0_A/7_0_4A0"/>
       <execute method="get" action="https://www.tadawul.com.sa/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_4BC?CompanySymbol=&amp;ANN_ACTION=ANN_SEARCH&amp;symbol={selection}&amp;tabOrder=1"/>
    </activityAction>
  </activity>
</openServiceDescription>

The XML is self explanatory.

• display tags control what you see when you right click. One thing worth mentioning here is the favicon link. This doesn’t exist in the Tadawul site but I’m putting it here just for showing how it should be done.
• activity tags define how to call the service.
• preview section : An Accelerator can provide an optional HTML preview that is displayed when the user hovers over an Accelerator on the menu. Previews are useful to quickly obtain a map, in-place definition or translation, content ratings, or links to related content. In our case to demonstrate the functionality I’m displaying the ticker. Again this is a limitation of the site, if we provide a backend service that provides preview information we can easily call it here. As an example the Virtual Earth Accelerator displays a quick map during the preview mode. The preview window is limited to 320 width and 240 height on a 96 dots per inch (dpi) display. All content outside of the region is cut off. That’s why if you try the above accelerator some of the ticker is cutoff.
• execute element specifies the main action triggered when the user invokes the Accelerator. Note the {selection} parameter, which means replace this token with the text the user selected in the page. There are different parameter types you can use.

2) Add a link or input to your web page and attach the following code.

<button onclick="window.external.AddService('TadawulAccelerator.xml')">Install Accelerator</button>

Sample web page I created looks like. Very simple page hence I didn’t give the code here.

3) When you click the Install Accelerator button, you get a warning message, click to install the accelerator.

4) Open any page, select an item. In our case it should be a numeric value that is a Stock Symbol. I’ve added two valid stock symbols which could be seen in the above page, 6010 or 6020.

As you see building an accelerator for Tadawul was very simple. It only took couple of hours including the learning. The only thing that needs to be considered is the backend services that are called by the accelerator. We can use GET or POST to call the service and pass the following variables.

To get more information on the IE8 Features in general I recommend the MSDN Article New Features To Slice, Store, And Accelerate Your Web Applications.

Also the following article gives a complete overview of accelerator development see OpenService Accelerators Developer Guide.

See Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit

See Internet Explorer 8 Team Blog