As Microsoft encourages the shift towards Windows Server 2008, you might think that the previous versions immediately become obsolete. But demand has shown this to be false, and this is why we at Reg Books have decided to package together the key Windows Server 2003 MCSE and MCSA Online Learning products into cost-effective collections.

It’s also accepted that, if you are looking to upgrade your qualification from Server 2000 to 2008, the upgrade path is unquestionably easier to follow if you first train on Server 2003 and then move on to the 2008 material (not that a straight jump from 2000 to 2008 is impossible).

With this in mind the Online Learning collections below could prove to be the most cost-effective piece of spending you do all year, not only providing the knowledge you need but saving you thousands of pounds on training. Can you afford not to take advantage?

Book extract, part four Redundancy, testability and readability are key to building simple and maintainable code. In the fourth extract from his book, Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development, published by Addison Wesley, Scott Bain tackles the problems and principles involved.

Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 OK, so choosing and installing the hardware - that was easy. I wish I could say the same for the software.

On the face of it all I had to do was install the beta version of Windows Server 2008, the production version of Visual Studio 2008 and the beta SQL Server 2008. Sorry, by beta of course I mean community technology preview. It appears that Microsoft has learned that renaming can be used to shed bad associations.

Register Books is offering big discounts on a range of A+ Certification titles that cover everything you need to know to pass the CompTIA A+ Certification exams.

This bloke once walked into a meeting I was attending and introduced a new word to my vocabulary: "Hafta", as in: "We hafta do it this way because..."

I've been trying to shake it off ever since.

Book extract, part three In the third extract from his book, Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development published by Addison Wesley, Scott Bain tackles the complex issue of coupling, and looks at how unnecessary complexity can be injected through accidental or bad coupling.

Stob It is time to wake up and smell the elephant in the room. Vista is struggling to achieve escape velocity. Microsoft finds itself the butt of an international joke, but does not seem able to get a grip. The issue of choice of platform is once more up for grabs.

Of course there is an alternative; a popular computing platform whose design attracts universal admiration. But although we all look forward to literally punching in the numbers, the Wii does not yet quite hack it (use of a dread phrase coming up) 'in the enterprise'.

So, for the time being, I'm afraid we are all back on re-evaluation-of-Linux duty. Never mind. I've already done the spadework. Let me lead you through a few simple steps to a full-on Open Source experience.

Site offer Managing content is a key issue in any business today, and is becoming more relevant as commerce moves inexorably online.

It's not easy to make software amusing, as a recent contest to crack jokes using Universal Modeling Language (UML) demonstrated.

But flowcharting George Lucas' plan to kill off the Star Wars franchise? Now that's not just funny, it might also be true.

Register Books is offering 20 per cent off all Microsoft’s Official Online Learning courses covering the .NET Framework 2.0, all of which can help you prepare for exam 70-536 TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation.

These courses are delivered online and can be activated within minutes of placing your order. See Register Books for general information, or visit the links below for specific product information or to make a purchase.

Once more unto the void...

Stob Perhaps motivated by the desire to avoid type-casting, David Tennant is to take time off from television, to lead the RSC's forthcoming production of Hamlet. Your correspondent sneaked into early rehearsals.

Myths and legends It seems there is a disquieting trend in IT: concepts are getting steadily vaguer, and claims harder to verify.

Take web services, for instance. The very name is disingenuous. They are services of a kind, but they don't have much to do with the web. Their key protocol is SOAP, which stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. Well, it is a protocol, all right. But it isn't simple, and it doesn't access objects.

Once more unto the void...

Windows Server 2008 is due for release on February 29, and as with most Microsoft releases, the fanfare from Seattle can be heard worldwide. Will it do what you want it to? What skills do you need? Is it any good?

What you really get on those Microsoft, Novell and Cisco courses...

Stob 'So that's how I came to be mysteriously orphaned and, on my ninth birthday, just three years ago today, sent to work as a junior grader at the Ah-Poo! Toilet Tissue reclamation factory at Fort Wirth', explained Jo, our heroine, a feisty, scruffy and independently-minded young tomboy whose more mature, more feminine side we won't really encounter until volume three.

If, as reported, entertainment giant Paramount throws its weight behind the Blu-ray high-definition DVD format it would seem like a vote in favor of using Java (Sun PDF here) in digital TV entertainment.

Think you've protected your web applications from cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities? The odds are against you. Roughly 90 per cent of web applications have this problem, and it's getting worse as web applications and web services share more and more data.

Many frameworks and libraries are encoding, decoding, and re-encoding with all kinds of schemes and sending data through new protocols. Ajax and other "rich" applications are complicating this situation.

Along with each New Year comes hopes and wishes that things will change for the best.