SQL Server has been around for many years with each version bringing more features, and for 2008 it's no different. The current beta version has many new features specific for developers aimed at producing more efficient code. Some of those features include Table Value Parameters, Hierarchy ID, and Grouping sets. Attend this session to be prepared when SQL Server 2008 is released later this year.
The language integrated query framework for Microsoft .NET is a set of language extensions to Microsoft Visual C# and Visual Basic and a unified programming model that extends the .NET Framework to offer integrated querying for objects, databases and XML. In this talk, LINQ/VB is used with in-memory collections, to access database data, handle XML documents, and understand the standard query operators I presented an instructor led lab on this subject at the Developers TechEd 2008 in Orlando and it was well received.
Microsoft's Entity Data Model allows us to define an application-oriented view of our data consistent with how we reason about that data. This session will cover the Entity Data Model, and how it enables us to represent real-world concepts in a way that makes relationships between related pieces of data more explicit and easier to query, navigate, and consume than through the traditional relational database model. There will be extensive demos on how to visually create the models to solve real world problems using Inheritance, compositions, and associations with Visual Studio 2008 SP1's designer.
This session will cover in depth the features of the ADO.NET Data Services release that will be available with Service Pack 1 of the .NET 3.5 Framework. Topics covered include using the AJAX client library to access and manipulate data through ADO.NET Data Services, delivering RESTful web services through ADO.NET Data Services, and providing JSON Serialization of your data objects using ADO.NET Data Services.
With increasing government regulation and with corporate liability becoming ever more dependent upon software application data, it is becoming essential that companies maintain complete audit trails of the activities transpiring on their software systems. But auditing features are often still tacked onto software apps as an afterthought, and when they exist at all they are often poorly done.
Surprisingly it is fairly easy to write software that maintains a 100% audit trail of all system activities. In fact, it is not very difficult to write an app that allows users to “turn back the clock”, using its own ordinary user interfaces 7(including its own reports) to display data exactly as it existed at any given moment in the past.
During the past few years we have been implementing innovative solutions for companies. Every time we meet a C level executive, department manager or even technical resource we always here the same thing “I did’t know sharepoint could do that”.
This session will explore some innovative things we have done with medium and large companies within SharePoint that everyone could use. We use forms, workflow, wiki’s and document management just to name a few. We will SHOW REAL WORLD EXAMPLES so you can see SharePoint in action.
Focusing on many “typical” enterprise applications where data is collected, stored, searched and displayed, we will explore the OOB capabilities of MOSS and Office that will allow your organization to retire stand-alone applications in favor of MOSS solutions.
Using Excel Services and MOSS, Walt Hodgson will demonstrate how simple it is to build customized MOSS web parts, deploy them in MOSS dashboards, and how to implement business rules in Excel to satisfy specific business needs, using a role-based demonstration approach.
The session will demonstrate the following:
1. Deploying a MOSS dashboard
2. Accessing Excel data via a web part
3. Developing and deploying an excel-based business application to MOSS
4. Accessing web service base data in an excel application
5. Housing and exposing business logic in Excel spreadsheets
Walt will challenge how you think about Excel. This not your mother’s VisiCalc.
Using a Help Desk sample application as a template, we will show how the Business Data Catalog (BDC), a feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), can be used to enable access to enterprise data sources within a line of business application. We will also demonstrate how complex human workflows can be managed within SharePoint through the use of custom Workflows developed in Visual Studio 2008.
In most larger SharePoint installations, developers cannot simply copy files to the production servers in order to deploy their components. This presentation discusses guidelines and suggestions for developing SharePoint components in an environment where access to test and production servers is controlled. Discussion topics include development & test environments, tool selection, development approaches and deployment procedures.
Reflection is a powerful way to dynamically inspect assembies at run-time to determine the structure of its contents, invoke methods, and change private field values (among other interesting tricks). But it doesn't stop there - .NET gives you the power to create code at run-time via its reflection infrastructure as well. In this presentation, I'll cover the essentials of the System.Reflection namespace (along with the changes that were added in 2.0), how to emit code at run-time, and other libraries that go far beyond what .NET can currently provide (FxCop's CCI library for introspection and Mono.Cecil for full assembly reading/writing).
Team Foundation Server (TFS) has been out on the market for a couple years and there is still more confusion about it, what it does and who can benefit from it. In this session Kirstin Juhl will show how each member of your team, project and company can use and benefit from TFS and how it can make life much simpler when it comes to all application lifecycle tasks.
Did you know that .csproj and .vbproj files are really MSBuild files? More than build processes though, MSBuild is a full-featured automation language. It includes structured control flow, variables, refactorability, error handling, logging, and powerful extensibility. You can easily integrate MSBuild into your own enterprise processes and start adding value right away. We'll also look at how Team Foundation Build extends on MSBuild and adds robust integration with Team Foundation Server.
Check back later for more information.
Builds are the heart beat of agile development. Continuous Integration builds are used by agile developers to immediately integrate source code changes into binary objects for testing and evaluation in an effort to stay on track. The challenge with the CI build process is that developers must move out of the MS VS/.Net IDEs to perform the builds, requiring manual coding that resembles a more waterfall than agile approach. This session will give you tips on how to design CI build scripts using MSBuild to create the most efficient CI Build possible.
Everyone’s talking about designer / developer collaboration … but what does that really mean? Anthony Handley will discuss how collaboration can bring better experiences to users and what we gain when the creative and technical work together.
WPF (or Windows Presentation Foundation) is Microsoft's latest framework for building applications and high fidelity experiences for Windows. This session will dive into the steps to create a WPF-based client application. Learn the basics of building WPF applications in the Visual Studio 2008 WPF designer, have a clear view on when you should work in XAML code and on the Visual Studio design surface to build your WPF application, and see how you can use Microsoft Expression Blend in conjunction with Visual Studio 2008 WPF designer. We'll also touch on some aspects of the new language integrated query framework for .NET ("LINQ"), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), as well as new language features in C#.
Since ASP.NET MVC gets rid of Viewstate and the postback model, most existing server controls aren't very useful for MVC related development. The ASP.Net MVC team has built in a whole set of helper methods to accelerate building your views, but there is more that can be done to make ui design more effective in the ASP.NET MVC framework.
In the new generation of browsers (Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3 and Opera 9) there has been significant improvements with JavaScript rendering speed. This means that rendering controls on the client side is much more feasible and efficient. We're going to leverage functionality and components from two different JavaScript libraries (jQuery and YUI), to make our ASP.NET MVC websites more expressive and functional.
A series of of silverlight techniques for developers for maximizing the functionality for Rich Internet Applications. In this talk you will see several demos that show you multiple functional features unique to Silverlight and that will help you build Rich Internet Applications.
While most everyone has heard of Facebook and pretty much knows what Facebook is not everyone sees the benefit in developing Facebook applications. Last year, Facebook released a platform for developers to create applications that interact with Facebook's valuable users and their user content. This can be a huge benefit to A) Recruit B) Market and C) Profit. This session will be theory as well as hands on as I walk you through creating a Facebook application from start to finish and give you the knowledge to start building your own.
Ever wonder what it would take to really build software that has fewer bugs, runs faster, and is still maintainable? Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers includes several tools to assist in writing quality code. In this session, we'll learn how to create and use unit tests, review code coverage across tests, and how to use the code analysis and profiling tools to ensure your code conforms to accepted industry or internal design.
This talk is an overview of XNA 3.0 (CTP or BETA, depending on what's released.) We will cover XNA Game Studio and the XNA Framework (and what's different between 2.0 and 3.0.) We will also cover Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune gaming, along with what you can & can't do on each platform. We will discuss the new XNA Community Games offering along with a demo (if possible.) Time permitting, third party tools will also be covered and I'll try to answer as many questions as possible.
A look back on the successes and growing pains of trying to convert a waterfall centric department into a team that is an Agile software development factory. The journey was a year and ½ in the making and continues on to this day.
Learn how to take ordinary Linq to Objects code and make it run over a thousand times faster by applying indexing techniques to in-memory collections using Linq to Objects. In this session, we cover not only how to use the techniques of indexed Linq, but we dive into how you can extend Linq on your own in order to implement your own indexing strategy. If you are curious about the Expression namespace in C#, this is a great session that can help you understand one application that uses the C# Expression class and its subclasses to implement a high-impact optimization usable in a large number of applications.
Integration is a mandatory requirement in current world, as no single software can accommodate needs of any IT organization. I would be covering pain points of integration and how they can be resolved by using BizTalk.
Learn how to develop using the Live Platform to deliver Software+Services solutions. We'll be drilling on the existing services which open up Microsoft's consumer online offering for use in third party web sites, and give a forward looking overview of the future and how you can develop against it.
Developing integration solutions is a challenging task and testing such solutions can be even more daunting still. There are generally two types of testing to consider when creating any server solution: Functional Testing and Stress Testing. Microsoft and the BizTalk community have created tools that can help you achieve both functional and stress testing objectives including:
Most .NET developers are familiar with serialization and many use it every day to call SOAP based web services. But there are other interesting things that you can do with serialization using the .NET Framework and some of the newer features like WCF and ADO.NET Data Services (formerly known as Project “Astoria”). We will look at some interesting applications of custom serialization and explore ways of calling services using REST and JSON.
