John Hopkins, president and a founding member of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG), presented on VS.NET 2005 for NWNUG's official VS2005, SQL2005, and BizTalk 2005 launch event. He gave an overview of the new technology and tools that Microsoft just released this month!

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John T. Hopkins is a veteran of 13 years in the IT industry, with experiences ranging from front-line tech support to IT management and everything in between. Currently an independent software consultant, John's focus is business productivity solutions built on the .NET platform.

Josh Holmes from SRT Solutions gave a lively overview of the data binding and caching options in ASP.NET 1, 1.1, and 2.0. He pointed out excellent pros and cons of the technologies, when to use them, and which options to aviod (e.g. never flush from cache). He used the example of the "world's dumbest clock" to illustrate the different levels of caching that can occur. Josh is an excellent teacher, and has recently been inducted to the INETA Speakers Bureau.

Greg Huber from TNS schooled us in some proper uses of XML and Xpath.

slides-2005-09-27.XPath.zip (633.75 KB)

Jason Follas from Perficient demonstrated new T-SQL and SQLCLR functionality in SQL 2005 (formerly code name Yukon). He covered T-SQL topics such as new Large Value functionality, the XML Data Type, PIVOT/UNPIVOT, Ranking Functions, and Recursion using Common Table Expressions. He also coverd SQLCLR topics such as Stored Procedures, Triggers, User-Defined Functions, User-Defined Types, User-Defined Aggregates. The presentation went into overtime where the diehards stuck around to watch Jason demonstrate the power of SQLCLR by running a ZMachine (text adventure game engine) on the SQL Server itself! He then added SQL Endpoints and consumed them using both an ASP.NET and Windows application.

SQL2005.08.30.2005.Presentation.zip (946.77 KB)