All the votes are in!
And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, December 2013 !!!!
The TechNet Guru Awards celebrate the technical articles on TechNet, contributed from valued wiki authors like YOU!
Each month, the contributions are scored by a panel of judges (5 per category, 2-3 in each are MS experts), and the winners of each category are showered with love and attention from all corners of TechNet.
See the links at the bottom, to find out more about the competition and how to enter.
We have picked the top three highest scored contributions for each category to bestow our awards upon.
The awards are in gold, silver and bronze, the gold obviously being the top winner of the category.
The last column is just a few of the comments judges made during the judging process.
In some cases, we have not obtained permission to use the judges names, so they have been reduced to initials.
My fellow wiki ninjas will be digging deeper into some of these articles in this blog series, so watch out for those.
Starting this month you will notice some articles are marked as failing to meet our minimum bar for quality or content.
Any of our judges can exercise their right to veto an article, if they do not feel it meets minimum requirements for a medal.
When this is the case, we will at least give an indication of the reason, so you understand why.
A big thank you also to the other authors who did not make the top three of each category.
Some articles only just missed out, so we may be returning to discuss those too, in future blogs.
 | BizTalk Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Steef-Jan Wiggers | Managing Windows Azure BizTalk Services with REST API | Ed Price: "I'm not sure how you come up with such vital topics, but this is as important as it comes, and you nailed it!!!" TGN: "It's almost unfair for others, Steef-Jan is a God when it comes to writing tutorials and articles, great one!" |
| Sandro Pereira | BizTalk Server: Grouping and Sorting Operations Inside BizTalk Maps Using the Muenchian Method | TGN: "Very good article, I love this. Explains grouping and sorting in a good way, and by following best practice. Very good Sandro" Ed Price: "Great explanations and fantastic formatting!" |
| Maheshkumar S Tiwari | BizTalk Server 2010: How to Insert Image In SQL Through Orchestration | Ed Price: "Very clear instructions through great use of images!" TGN: "Should contain a warning around the size of the images, I do not usually recommend this way when using BizTalk due to performance." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Creating a Custom Itinerary Orchestration Service for the Recipient List pattern by Tomasso Groenendijk
Ed Price: "Great formatting and use of diagrams, screenshots, and code snippets!"
TGN: "very good and well explained article regarding custom itinarary, well done again Thomasso!" - Windows Azure BizTalk Service Explorer by Steef-Jan Wiggers
Ed Price: "This is an incredibly important article, and Steef-Jan nails it in every possible way! This is a great tutorial for using the interface!"
TGN: "Love it I was waiting for an article like this. Awesome Steef-Jan!" - Creating a MessageBox On-Ramp in the ESB Toolkit by Tomasso Groenendijk
TGN: "I'm amazed with this article, very useful and well written Article Thomasso!" - BizTalk Server 2013: Creating Custom Adapter Provider in ESB Toolkit SFTP As an Example by Suleiman Shakhtour
TGN: "Good article with a lot of nice content and images! Well done!" - Sysprep BizTalk Server by Colin Meade
This article unfortunately failed the minimum Quality/Content bar for an award.
The fail comments were: "This article includes a lot of error and wrongs when it comes to configuration"
| SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Matthew Yarlett | SharePoint: A Complete Guide to Getting and Setting Fields using C# | Craig Lussier: "A fantastic reference that every SharePoint developer should have bookmarked. Well done!" GO: "Matthew knows how to write an article worthy of recognition! This is a reliable source and contains many SharePoint and PowerShell examples that will be useful for IT-PRO as developers! A big thank you for your participation and your articles Matthew! Excellent work!" Margriet Bruggeman: "What a handy reference!" Ed Price: "What an epic article! From Mohammad in the comments: "this is something to add in my favourites, thanks" Jinchun Chen: "Good guide" |
| Benoit Jester - MTFC | SharePoint 2013 - Design Manager : Use of Display Templates | Ed Price: "The comments say it well. From Matthew: "Great article Benoit! I agree, it's a great feature!" From Dan: "I agree with Matthew. I can see myself refer to this article in the near future. I'm definitely adding this to my bookmark list. Thank you Benoit for sharing your knowledge."" Craig Lussier: "Great walkthrough of Display Templates in SharePoint 2013. Well written, great screenshots and thoughtful material. " GO: "If you want to have a better knowledge of SharePoint 2013, Benoit is your man! Again a great article: The use of XSLT ? Done ! This article absolutely deserves a medal!" Margriet Bruggeman: "Not a big fan of design manager, but def. a nice write-up" |
| Nilesh Jain | Sharepoint 2010 : A Complete list of SPFile Operations using ECMA Script | Jinchun Chen: "Good getting start" GO: "This articles show us various methods/properties associated with SPFile object! Clever article and well written! Great source!" Craig Lussier: "Well written reference for SPFile operations with solid examples. " Ed Price: "Solid formatting! Great comments on this article: From Matthew: "Nice article Nilesh!" From Dan: "Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I'm a big fan of using screenshots when writing an article and you've definitely done a great job here. Thanks again."" Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice idea, but the reference is too short to be really cool" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- SharePoint 2013 : Adding NT Authority\Anonymous Logon to Business Data Connectivity by Daniel Christian
Jinchun Chen: "Why not adding domain users for allowing all domain user to access the BDC?"
Ed Price: "Good use of images and video! Could use some tighter formatting on indentations and bullet numbering. Great article!"
Margriet Bruggeman: "Wow, what a strange situation. But where are the pics?"
Craig Lussier: "Although there are alternate ways to implement this type of security, the described approach does work. Thank you for sharing your experience."
GO: "There are other ways to resolve his case, but the way shown by Dan is also correct! Thanks for the article!" - SharePoint: Write-Once Fields by Matthew Yarlett
Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice, never thought about this solution, while it is a valid request! I'll store this for future reference"
Craig Lussier: "Insightful article for implementing a write-once field concept by controlling form fields available to end users for data manipulation. Extra credit would have been given for providing an example on how to enforce this concept using an event receiver to prevent programmatic manipulation after a first write."
GO: "As always, a great article!"
Jinchun Chen: "It apply to the whole list. Only when we re-enable the field(s), we won't be able to add another new one item with the hidden field(s)"
Ed Price: "Great article! Could benefit from a TOC." - PDF loader popup using SharePoint Visual Web Part with progress bar till report is loaded by Mohammad Nizamudin
This article unfortunately failed the minimum Quality/Content bar for an award.
The fail comments were: 1. "Provided code example is a shell and does not contain any code to demonstrate showing a popup or a progress bar. Additionally the article has a catch block but does not implement any error handling logic."
2 - "Not finished. I'm not convinced about the article."
| Small Basic Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic Known Issue: 21694 - Font and Pen Width Change Earlier in Remote | RZ: "Very useful tip. May potentially save some frustration :)" Ed Price: "This code is very helpful!" |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic Known Issue: 22108 - Viewport of GraphicsWindow is Narrower and Sometimes Resized in Remote | Ed Price: "The diagrams really help make this clear. Great job!" RZ: "Again, very useful tip. And thank you highlighting them." |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic Known Issue: 21691 - Rectangle and Ellipse Become Smaller in Remote | RZ: "Very useful tip. May potentially save some frustration :)" Ed Price: "Your samples you wrote help give these articles an added boost!" |
| SQL BI and Power BI (SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, Power Pivot) Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Tim Pacl | Functional Reports: Making a Report Into a Management Tool | NN: "Terrific article! Very helpful and clean steps" Ed Price: "Tim nails it again with a fantastic and descriptive narrative on a great topic! It could be improved with images to show what you're describing. Fantastic article!" |
| Michael Amadi | A practical example of how to handle simple many to many relationships in Power Pivot/SSAS Tabular models | Ed Price: "Great topic and great formatting! The descriptions are helpful, the images and the tables help clarify. The bold text really pops! Great article!" NN: "Great article explaining a common problem and solution" |
| Tim Pacl | Using a Date Picker for an Analysis Data Query Parameter | NN: "Another interesting article by Tim" Ed Price: "Another great article from Tim. Shorter but sweet!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- SSRS - Dependent Parameter and Wild Search in Parameter by Rishab Sachdeva
Ed Price: "Good instructions made clear with images. I would tighten the formatting with consistent font sizes, consistent spacing around images, and better formatting on the code blocks. But the content is very well done!"
NN: "I like that the article is very detailed and easy to reproduce, but the queries it uses are not good from the optimization point of view. " - Using parameters and variables in a Script Task by SSISJoost
NN: "Another good and short clear article by SSISJoost" - Execute SSIS 2012 package with parameters via .Net by SSISJoost
NN: "Helpful article" - Using parameters and variables in a Script Component by SSISJoost
NN: "One more good article by SSISJoost based on his blog post" - Populate Excel table with custom MDX query & PivotTable filters by Christian Wade
- SSAS time dimension with semi-additive measures; dynamic set; calculated members by Minnie Shi
NN: "This article is hard to understand without samples"
| SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Uwe Ricken | How does SQL Server allocate space in a heap | Samuel Lester: "Amazing content, great presentation, and incredibly educational! " DRC: "• Very nice article, very well documented. • Clear explanation of the behaviour and queries to trace the same. • This also explains the output of the queries which makes the users more comfortable while reproducing the behaviour explained. • The only modification is to remove the .(dot) for the value “8.096” which should be 8096. " DB: "Clear and informative explanation of details not available elsewhere." Jinchun Chen: "Awesome" Ed Price: "Another high-quality article from Uwe! Great formatting and even a good interaction with Shanky in the comments!" NN: "Great and thorough article" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month, all of which unfortunately failed the quality/content bar :(
Ed Price: "A good solution and some great suggestions from Shanky in the comments! Examples would help."
NN: "Another great article by Praveen which contains many methods to check Server and Windows Restart time."
Samuel Lester: "Knowing when SQL Server restarted is nice, but knowing why it restarted is often the more important issue. The methods you highlight are creative and allow you to quickly find the first answer, but aside from determining if it was restarted due to an OS reboot, it would be nice to dig more into the topic of why. Great content on what could turn into a spectacular topic and set of troubleshooting steps."
DRC: "• It mentioned about finding the "reason" for the SQL Server and windows restarts at the beginning but the details are missing in the article. . The query "SELECT create_date FROM sys.databases WHERE name = 'tempdb'" will not work if traceflag 3609 is ON which doesn’t create a new tempdb file during sql server startup. For windows: Method 1: Start Task Manager->Performance Method 1 shows only the uptime but doesn’t show the actual time of restart. If the server has been up for a long time, then the calculation is very difficult Method 2: This method helps you to figure out root cause for the restart. start -> run -> eventvwr The 2nd method will not help if event viewer logs are clreared. • We have a better method to find the system startup time where we don’t depend on any other logs or tools. C:\> systeminfo | find /i "Boot Time" "
This article unfortunately failed the minimum Quality/Content bar for an award.
The fail comments were: "Article seems to be incomplete and need lot of modifications "
- Log Shipping false error message - 14420 by Praveen D'sa
NN: "This is very helpful article for troubleshooting Log Shipping problems"
Samuel Lester: "Good catch on checking both properties. Migrating environments and changing machine names often pose challenges for different reasons. I could see this article being a reference to a broader "migration" list. "
DRC: "• This article talks about one of the possible reasons for this error. • We already have a KB article for the above error with more details. It also addresses multiple scenarios. Description of error message 14420 and error message 14421 that occur when you use log shipping in SQL Server http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329133 • The screen shots in the articles are not clear. We can add the text of the error message as well as the Queries to fetch the result. "
DB: "Interesting detective story. Moral is to follow the documented procedure when changing server names."
Ed Price: "Good article, but it could benefit from better formatting. The font should be Segoe UI, and the code should be in a better formatted code block. However, the content is still very helpful. Shanky also has some good suggestions in the comments."
This article unfortunately failed the minimum Quality/Content bar for an award.
The fail comments were: "This article seems to be duplicating the KB article information. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329133 " - Extract SQL Server Instance Path Dynamically by Manish Maheshwari
NN: "The comment to this article indicates that there may be situations when the code will not work"
Samuel Lester: "Great topic to tackle. Take a look at Uwe's comments to dig further into the topic. Try to understand why he's asking each point and how solving these would improve the robustness and flexibility of the script. "
DRC: "The right way to fix the issue is using the below command or through the GUI option. USE [master] GO EXEC xp_instance_regwrite N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'DefaultData', REG_SZ, N'D:\MSSQL11.SQL2012\MSSQL\DATA\' GO EXEC xp_instance_regwrite N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'DefaultLog', REG_SZ, N'D:\MSSQL11.SQL2012\MSSQL\DATA\' GO EXEC xp_instance_regwrite N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'BackupDirectory', REG_SZ, N'D:\MSSQL11.SQL2012\MSSQL\Backup\' GO We also have a technet article for this. View or Change the Default Locations for Data and Log Files (SQL Server Management Studio) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd206993.aspx "
This article unfortunately failed the minimum Quality/Content bar for an award.
The fail comments were: 1."This cannot be a wiki. And the solution provided in the script is not the right approach to fix the issue. The right approach is explained in: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd206993.aspx"
2.: "See Uwe's comment in the Wiki article."
| Transact-SQL Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Naomi N | T-SQL: Relational Division | DB: "Clear and detailed." Jinchun Chen: "Nice article!" Richard Mueller: "Very well done and well researched." Ed Price: "The article comments say it welll. From Saeid: "Surprised with this one! This is really one of the important topics. Many questions in MSDN SQL forums are about this topic" From Carmelo: "Very good work Naomi!" " Samuel Lester: "Outstanding article again! As mentioned in the article and comments, variations of this question appear in the forums frequently and it is nice to have this article to reference. Great breadth and depth with each solution!" |
| Durval Ramos | How to extract data in XML to meet the requirements of a Schema | Samuel Lester: "Creative solution and great write-up! " Richard Mueller: "The articles in this group were very close. This is a great article with outstanding links. The See Also section should only include Wiki articles." Ed Price: "Very detailed narrative that's well supported by great formatting and images! Great article!" |
| Saeid Hasani | Error handling within Triggers using T-SQL | Richard Mueller: "A well executed article. The trigger rules were confusing to me." Ed Price: "Another great article from Saeid! This could be made better with more explanations for each step. Good job!" Samuel Lester: "Great new content and nice companion to your prior article. " |
| Visual Basic Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Dewayne Basnett | Prime Number Sieve | Richard Mueller: "Amazing material that will take some study, but very clever. Donald Knuth in "The Art of Computer Programming", vol. 2, says Eratosthenes filter only considers odd integers and increments from p*p." SB: "Nice article, not much practical use but just details coding for the fun of solving a problem" |
| HomeGrownCoder | Don't Throw Out the System Brushes | Richard Mueller: "An important concept that is well explained, with lots of links. Should have a See Also section." SB: "Nice article which address a real world issue that occurs." |
| Paul Ishak | Declaring numeric data types | SB: "Good simple piece helping detail best numeric types to use." Richard Mueller: "Basic recommendations. This article could use links and a See Also section." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- expandable properties - ColorEditor by .paul.
Richard Mueller: "Good concept. The article could use links and a See Also section. I don't care for the use of "+" in place of "and"."
| Visual C# Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Loading Related Entities in Entity Framework | NN: "Very clear and helpful article! Nicely done" DB: "Clear and informative." Ed Price: "Fantastic article with a good suggestion in the comments. Could benefit from a TOC. Great job!" |
| chriga | Identifying and Resolving Shortcuts/Links of files and folders | NN: "Short and useful article" DB: "Useful bit of information." Ed Price: "Great formatting and article!" |
| Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Saad Mahmood | Binding any JSON data list in your application in 10 mins.(Windows Phone) | Ed Price: "Great detail, formatting, and use of images!" Peter Laker: "Nice simple example" |
| Saad Mahmood | Now Check for updates of your app inside your Windows Phone application | Ed Price: "Good use of code formatting. Could benefit from a TOC." Peter Laker: "Great article, thanks Saad" |
| Ken Tucker | Convert date time received in JSON to a .Net DateTime | Ed Price: "It's valuable, short and sweet, good code commenting, and it has good interaction in the Wiki article comments. But it is a bit generic for this category." Peter Laker: "Top tip, nice layout, thanks Ken!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Windows Phon 8 Emulator Compatbility Issue in Windows 8.1/ Getting Error HRESULT: 0x89721800 after installing VS Update 3 by Saad Mahmood
- Using RichTextBox and Writing Mathematical Equations in Windows Phone by Saad Mahmood
- Guages for Windows Phone 8 by Saad Mahmood
- Using lockable pivot in Windows Phone by Saad Mahmood
- Parsing JSON in Windows Phone by Saad Mahmood
- Resolving internet connection issue in Windows Phone 8 Emulator [Plagiarised] by Saad Mahmood
| Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| dev hedgehog | The Myth of BindingGroup | Ed Price: "Very thorough article developed from forum questions. Great job! But why is it a Myth if it's really helpful? =^)" Peter Laker: "Another excellent contribution from dev hedgehog. Good subject." |
| Shweta Lodha | Safest way to use RaisePropertyChanged method | Ed Price: "Good topic and explanations. Could be improved with black font and with a TOC. Good job!" Peter Laker: "Nice tip from Shweta. There are various variations to this." |
| chriga | Binding of DataGrid column header | Ed Price: "Short and sweet! Fantastic formatting and great descriptions help sell this one!" Peter Laker: "Useful example and welcome edition to the knowledge base, thanks chrigra!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Adding Combobox in WPF Datagrid header using MVVM by Ayyappan
Peter Laker: "Nice example of how it's done :)"
Ed Price: "Could be improved with well-formatted code blocks. "
| Windows Server Technical Guru - December 2013 |
| Mr X | How DNS aging and scavenging works | Richard Mueller: "Very good information. The images, links, and code example help a lot." JH: "Brilliant article, great explanations and illustrations" Ed Price: "Explanations, links, code, images, diagrams... it's all here! It could benefit from a TOC for easier navigation. Just add headers and then "[toc]" at the top of the article." JM: "Excellent article and a nice use of good graphics, nice work!" |
| Kelly Bush | Delegate Replication Rights to non-admins | JM: "This is an excellent article, nice work!" JH: "Like how author organized and summarized a forum post and added more, like "applies to" values " Ed Price: "Good reference, instructions, explanations, and images! Could be improved with a TOC." Richard Mueller: "On my first reading of the articles in this section I had a 3 way tie for first. This article covers a very important concept for security. It could use a See Also section." |
| Mr X | How to mark an Active Directory attribute to be copied when duplicating a user template | Richard Mueller: "Very useful and well explained information. Very good images. This could use a See Also section." JM: "This is an excellent article, however the first sentence needs to be revised for clarity." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- How to secure DNS updates on Microsoft DNS servers by Mr X
Ed Price: "Another great article from Mr. X! Could be improved with a TOC."
JM: "Another excellent article that benefits the community, thanks!"
Richard Mueller: "Great links in this article" - How to convert a dynamic resource record to a static one without re-creating it in DNS by Mr X
JH: "good info, concise, well illustrated"
JM: "Another really good article, great work."
Richard Mueller: "Good information, especially combined with the other articles that cover DNS."
--------- 8< -------
A huge thank you to EVERYONE who contributed an article to December's competition.
Hopefully we will see you ALL again in January 2014's listings?
If you haven't contributed an article for this month, and you think you can create a more useful, clever and better presented wiki article than the winners above, here's your chance! :D
Best regards,
Pete Laker
More about the TechNet Guru Awards: