As Brian transitions into his new role at Microsoft, he looks back at 15 years of being a developer, consultant, and business leader. He will talk about the skills and wisdom that you need to be happy and successful.
Brian H. Prince is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft focused on building and educating the architect community in his district. Prior to joining Microsoft in March 2008, he was a Senior Director, Technology Strategy for a major mid-west partner.
Further, he is a co-founder of the non-profit organization CodeMash (www.codemash.org). He speaks at various regional and national technology events including TechEd.
Brian holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science and Physics from Capital University, Columbus, Ohio. He is also an avid gamer.
The regular meeting night for March falls on March 18, which is the same day as the Launch Event in Detroit for Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008. Consequently, our scheduled speaker (Joe Wirtley) will be attending the launch event in Detroit on that day.
Since several attempts to line up a replacement speaker on a different night have not been fruitful, Greg and Jason have decided to cancel the March meeting. We'll see you in April!
Developers have all experienced the fun of writing CRUD applications. In the end, you're left with a mountain of data access code - most of it repetitive. Wouldn't it be great if you could spend more time writing actual business logic and less time writing the same old data access code? In this introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, Michael Eaton will show that you can write less data access code and be more productive by using this free open-source framework. For completeness, Mike will also compare ActiveRecord to traditional data access development.
 Michael Eaton is an independent consultant who lives in southern Michigan. Since 1994, Mike has been designing and implementing solutions using Microsoft technologies, specializing in .NET and SQL Server development. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCSD), has taught introductory programming courses at Lansing Community College, and has been published in Visual Studio Magazine.
But wait! It's a Two For Tuesday!
NWNUG welcomes back Jay Wren from the Ann Arbor .NET Developers (AADND), who will provide an introduction to ADO.NET. This will establish a baseline of knowledge that will lead into Mike's more advanced topic.
Jay R. Wren has been writing custom software solutions for integrating Windows and Unix for over seven years. His blend of traditional system administration and custom software solutions has allowed numerous enterprises to transcend platform dependence. Some of his software is still in use at a state university in Michigan and at the nations largest payroll processor.
No, you don't need to bring a covered dish to this meeting. We're just trying to find a name for meetings that consist of two or more short (and unrelated) sessions rather than one longer one.
In this meeting, Jason Follas will highlight some of the new features that developers will find useful in the upcoming SQL Server 2008.
Also, it seems that all of the cool kids are using "Agile" methodologies these days, but what does that really mean? Greg Huber will discuss his experience with Agile Development.
Beyond that, feel free to bring your questions and problems involving .NET (and SQL Server): We'll close the meeting with some group discussion and conversation.
NOTE: Due to a venue conflict, this month's meeting is one week later than the regularly scheduled meeting.
In recent years, many features have been added to the C# language that make it possible to write programs using techniques from other programming paradigms. Chief among these is functional programming. Often regarded as only being academically useful, functional programming has many practical uses, some of which appear within the .NET Framework itself. In this session, we'll examine some ideas taken from functional programming and see how they might be implemented using language features that already exist within C#. In addition, we'll highlight ways in which the .NET Framework APIs borrow from functional programming. Throughout, we will focus on how to use these techniques in practical ways.
 Dustin Campbell is a lead developer for the IDE tools division at Developer Express Inc. His responsibilities at Developer Express include much of the low-level plumbing of the award-winning CodeRush and Refactor! products. A regular speaker, Dustin is a noted authority in many advanced areas of the .NET Framework and tends to get “under the hood” in any area that he is learning. For his contributions to the community, Dustin was awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status by Microsoft in 2007.
Two topics in one! Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection: Inversion of control, or IoC, is about enforcing isolation. IoC can help you write more maintainable code that is highly decoupled and easy to test. Remove boilerplate code by using Castle's Windsor IoC container. Improve your designs by thinking about IoC and testability.
Jay R. Wren has been writing custom software solutions for integrating Windows and Unix for over seven years. His blend of traditional system administration and custom software solutions has allowed numerous enterprises to transcend platform dependence. Some of his software is still in use at a state university in Michigan and at the nations largest payroll processor.
Note: This meeting was originally indicated to be "NWNUG Presents: XML Usage Scenarios". However, busy work/travel schedules prevented that presentation from coming together, so Jason will be giving his current talk to the group instead (which is sort of on the same topic...)
XML-based data is very prevalent in today's data world to the point that every database developer should know how to work with XML. Middle-tier translation of XML into relational data may be inflexible, and often leads to a loss of fidelity over time. One solution is to move the XML handling into the database itself in order to improve overall integration. SQL Server 2005 provides powerful XML processing features that allow easy access to data stored within XML without sacrificing any of the original fidelity.
 Jason Follas, President of the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group, has over 13 years of professional experience developing for the Microsoft platform using Visual Basic and C#. He is a Technical Architect for Perficient, Inc. proudly serving the Toledo and Detroit markets, and is a Microsoft MVP (SQL Server) and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCAD, MCSD.NET). Over the course of his career, Jason has worked on a wide assortment of projects for various industries, including an Aircraft Weight and Balance system, several e-Commerce websites, Risk Management systems, and blend optimization software. Hobbies and interests include Coin-Op Video Game restoration, prime numbers and factoring, astronomy, and annihilating songs by attempting to play them on his guitar.
Due to a combination of details (both Greg and Jason are travelling in July, and we didn't have a speaker lined up), we have decided to take the month of July off.
So, just to recap: There will be no NWNUG meeting in July.
We hope to see all of you in August! Look for details here and in email.
 Scott Cate began with a simple 100-level ASP.NET "Frequently Asked Questions" application that directly binds the user interface to the database. Then he proceeded to abstract the data layer away from the Application. At this point, the application was in a state that is about as far as most developers go when writing web applications (resulting in the UI being tightly coupled with the application).
So, Scott went a step further and abstracted the UI layer away from the application so that the application was no longer dependant on the UI at all. Finally, to demonstrate this functionality, he built a new UI with Windows Forms that binds to the application.
This design pattern is known as the "Model View Presenter".
NOTE: This meeting was our Big Prize Raffle meeting where NWNUG member Aaron Lease was the lucky winner of a Zune!
 Scott Cate is the President of myKB.com, Inc., in Scottsdale, Arizona. myKB.com is a technology company specializing in commercial ASP.NET applications. His product line includes myKB.com (Knowledge Base Software), kbAlertz.com (Microsoft Knowledge Base Notifications), and EasySearchASP.net (a Pluggable Search Engine for ASP.NET sites). Scott also runs AZGroups.com (Arizona .NET User Groups), one of the largest and most active user group communities in the country, and is a member of ASPInsiders.com, a group devoted to giving early feedback to the Microsoft ASP.NET Team. Scott has also been awarded the ASP.NET MVP for three years in a row, from 2004-2006. In addition, Scott has co-authored "Beginning AJAX with ASP.NET" ( http://BeginningAjax.com ) released in 2006 and the non-fiction novel "Surveillance" ( http://surveillance-the-novel.com ).
INFO: ArcReady comes to Detroit on May 25! http://www.arcready.com/
Josh Holmes introduces Microsoft Silverlight, which is described as "a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows." (source: http://silverlight.net/Default.aspx)
 Josh Holmes is a Architect Evangelist for Microsoft Corporation. Over the past ten years, he has worked with a diverse client set, ranging from large Fortune 500 firms to smaller-sized companies. Specializing in mobility solutions, Josh has developed server, web, desktop, handheld and Pocket PC applications. Josh is an accomplished trainer with a deep and varied knowledge base. He has developed software technology courses in the areas of .NET, ASP.NET, XML SPY, XML, VB.NET, C#, Compact Framework and Advanced Compact Framework. Utilizing his unique combination of theoretical knowledge and hands on experience, Josh combines the abstract with real life, practical day-to-day applications. A frequent speaker and lead panelist at national and international software development conferences focusing on emerging technologies, software design and development, Josh also served as an officer for several non-profit technology organizations including Volunteer IT, Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group and the Ann Arbor Computing Society.
Since about 75% of all software developers write applications that make use of databases, managing schema changes in their development, testing, staging and production environments can be overwhelming and very difficult to accomplish. Until now, the Database Professional has been left out the development life cycle.
A new tool from Microsoft (Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, or better known as "Data Dude") will enable the people who develop the application databases to become a full fledge member of the software development team... Yay!
With this tool, we advocate that there should be one version of the truth for the data and one version of the truth for the schema. VSTEDP manages the one version of the truth for your database schema objects in a disconnected off-line environment, storing them in source control allowing the schema to be versioned and shared with the rest of the team.
Randy Pagels is a Developer Technology Specialist for the Microsoft Corporation and works in the Heartland District. He provides coverage for MI, OH, and KY and focuses on Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server. Before coming to Microsoft, Randy worked as a developer for 16 years in a large company in Southeastern Michigan. He is experienced in SQL Server technologies and ASP.NET object oriented design and programming. He has also architected and developed many client, web applications, and e-commerce systems, including an award winning fleet maintenance tracking system using the Agile SDLC methodology. A long-standing active member in the .Net community, Randy continues to promote Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Team System as the preferred choice for software development teams when talking about Application Lifecycle Management tools.
CSLA.NET 2.0 allows you to quickly develop applications by simplifying the creation of business objects. The framework allows developers to concentrate on the business logic implementation and not worry about the tedious details and plumbing code. The framework provides an abstracted data portal, n-level undo, security, serialization, transactions, and data-binding support.
In this presentation, we’ll look at how the CSLA.NET framework provides these features and how it is different than data persistence frameworks. We will then implement our own business objects using the CSLA.NET framework.
Jamie Wright is president of Innovativ Studios, a software development consulting service provider and ISV for software management applications. He has over ten years software development experience in Microsoft technologies and has developing in .NET since the first beta release. He specializes in application architecture, design patterns, object-oriented design, and business objects using the .NET framework. He loves spending time with his newly growing family, blogging at http://wrightin.gs, and he is currently getting therapy for his gadget addiction.
NWNUG will be celebrating the launch of Windows Vista at the beginning of the meeting, followed by Ken's presentation:
Application Frameworks increase the quality of code, decrease the "time to market", and, if they are configurable, decrease the cost of a change to the application and how it behaves. Stand alone code generators create working code from templates, merging in application-specific metadata such as database schema information, to quickly produce common application functionality. What happens when you COMBINE code generation with two of the most popular ASP.NET application frameworks available: DotNetNuke and Microsoft's recently release ASP.NET AJAX? Come find out.
DotNetNuke (http://www.dotnetnuke.com) provides a security, performance and GUI framework for web applications - allowing software developers to focus on application specific functionality by building "modules" that plug into the framework and to be configured through the browser in various configurations.
ASP.NET AJAX (http://ajax.asp.net) allows rich User Interface experiences using DHTML, JavaScript and asynchronous XML-based HTTP requests allowing only those portions of the page that actually change to update - eliminating the "erase and refresh" UI experience with traditional web applications.
We will demonstrate the generation of DotNetNuke application-specific modules that utilize ASP.NET AJAX to provide a highly configurable, rich User experience - all without coding. The generated modules support DotNetNuke's module settings ability to allow the modules to behave differently on different pages of the site. In addition to being able to configure each module, each control WITHIN the module can be configured via the browser (in DNN) as well, giving fine-grained configurability to modules with the DotNetNuke application.
Ken Kutz is Senior Manager of Web Development for HCR Manor Care and has been connecting web pages to databases since Netscape was the leader in that space in the 90s. Ken has over 20 years of IT experience.
Reuben Ahmed is a developer for HCR Manor Care currently specializing in the development of reusable web application frameworks. Using the code generator being presented, he has had his hand in developing approximately 50 web applications in the past 5 years.
Note that starting in January 2007, NWNUG's meetings will be held on the third Tuesday of each month (instead of the last Tuesday). This means that NWNUG's meeting will now be aligned with GANG's meeting, which is the third Wednesday of each month in Southfield, MI.
In the ever-changing world of software development, we must constantly keep up with new technologies. In fact, so much time is spent absorbing new APIs, documentation and hype that we are often left with very little time to improve our coding skills. This session will some discuss general ways to improve code quality that apply to all languages. In addition, we’ll cover several ways to use C# 2.0 (and some future C# 3.0) features to create readable and elegant code.
 Dustin Campbell is a lead developer for the IDE tools division at Developer Express Inc. His responsibilities at Developer Express include much of the low-level plumbing of the award-winning CodeRush and Refactor! products. Dustin is an expert in many advanced areas of .NET and specializes in design patterns, refactoring and object-oriented design.
NOTE: Special Meeting Date
November's presenter is an INETA speaker. Due to travel schedules, we had to move to meeting to November 15th instead of the usual date. Note that this is a Wednesday, and not a Tuesday.
Adding Response and Reliability to Your Solutions with MSMQ Triggers
One of the best ways to increase the perceived response and reliability of your .NET solutions is to incorporate MSMQ services into your implementation. In this talk you’ll learn how to create useful MSMQ-based services that use triggers to fire off custom workflows based on the message placed in the queue. The talk covers the basics of MSMQ and MSMQ Triggers; shows you how you can identify opportunities in your application to add MSMQ services; and how to manage and monitor MSMQ services during the lifetime of your application.
The talk includes a number of code samples and additional resources for leveraging MSMQ services on Windows XP, NT, and Server 2003 platforms.
 An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen has traveled throughout the United States and Europe speaking and teaching on a wide range of topics including .NET, the Internet, team development, and other subjects.
He has more than a dozen books to his credit. His most popular titles are Teach Yourself Database Programming with Visual Basic in 21 Days, Using Visual InterDev, and ASP.NET for Developers.
When he is not working, Mike spends time with his wife and three children at their home in Kentucky, USA.
Layouts, Styles and Templates in Windows Presentation Foundation
One powerful feature of Windows Presentation Foundation is the separation of the appearance of controls and the behavior of controls. In this session, we'll look at the power of layouts, styles and templates and how you'll use them in your applications. We'll also look at the underlying concepts that make them work and how you can use them to compose your own WPF components.
 Drew Robbins is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft in the Heartland District. Drew has over 12 years of experience using Microsoft products as both an IT Professional and Application Developer. Before joining Microsoft, Drew was already very active in the developer community on both a local and global level. He served in central Ohio as a Microsoft Regional Director (honorary Microsoft position), establishing a major user group and working in several enterprise accounts. Drew was also recognized as a Microsoft MVP for his role in community and expertise in Visual Studio and ASP.NET. Drew mobilized the global developer community through blogging websites that drove buzz and participation in conferences such as TechEd, PDC and DevDays. Drew is a regular presenter at local and regional events on Microsoft technology and development methodology.
Intro Session: Are you scared of using Delegates in .NET? Do you have no idea what that last question even means? NWNUG's President (Jason Follas) will initiate the the NWNUG Introduces series of short (< 20 minute) presentations with "An Introduction to Delegates in .NET".
Main Presentation: NWNUG's Chariman (Greg Huber) will present on the upcoming Microsoft AJAX Library and ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions. Prior to September 11, 2007, these technologies were collectively known as ATLAS.
 Greg Huber is the founder and chairman of the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group, established in 2001. Greg is a Microsoft MVP and was first recognized in 2004 for his role in community and expertise in Visual Studio .NET and ASP.NET. He is also a membership manager for INETA, the International .NET Association, where he enjoys helping the user group community flourish. Professionally, Greg has been developing software on the Microsoft platform since 1998. He is currently employed at TNS (a global market research firm) as the director of software development. Greg is an avid geek and enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter, geocaching, developing software, and gaming on the Xbox 360.
Artifacts:
Delegates.ppt (82.5 KB)
There's a new application development discipline that focuses on increasing worker productivity by building new systems by composing them from current systems. These "Composable Systems" are made possible by a combination of new integration technologies and standards. In this session we'll look at the new Microsoft applications stack designed to allow developers to rapidly prototype, create and deploy this new breed of systems. We'll do a technical deep dive on current and "near future" technologies like Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, InfoPath 2007 and Windows Workflow Foundation with an eye toward how the developer's world is impacted by the adoption of these new technologies and the new development paradigm.
![Tim Landgrave [RD]](http://www.nwnug.com/content/binary/TimLandGrave.jpg) Tim Landgrave has worked with Microsoft development technologies since 1987. As an entrepreneur, evangelist, developer, architect, instructor and coach he has helped hundreds of companies and developers adopt and deploy systems based on the Microsoft platform. In his current capacity as a Microsoft MVP for Systems Architecture he works with organizations who are designing their next generation "Composable Systems" based on technologies such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Windows Workflow Foundation (a component of the .NET Framework 3.0). In this role he collaborates with architects and senior developers to design and plan enterprise solutions implemented using the latest architectural principles. Tim has also served as a Regional Director for Microsoft since 1996, providing a third party view of Microsoft technologies as an evangelist, consultant and trainer for strategic development technologies. He's a regular regional and national speaker at Microsoft events and a standing member of the .NET Partner Advisory Council and the Patterns and Practices advisory board for Microsoft.
Artifacts from the meeting:
ComponentOne INETA User Group Promotion (register on site before 9/30/2006 to be eligible to win a XBox360): http://www.componentone.com/INETAXbox
Part I: The first section covered er a very high level of what each of these technologies are, what they can do, and when you would want to use them.
Part II: The second session covered, in detail, how you can use WF in your applications. Workflow is everywhere, and you will learn how to leverage this new technology.
Brian is the Practice Manager of the Application Development consulting practice at Quick Solutions, Inc. He has achieved over eleven years Information Technology management and consulting experience including e-commerce, extranets, and business technology. Brian has successfully implemented his technology expertise in numerous industries including real estate, financial services, healthcare, retail and state government institutions.
Brian has exceptional proficiency in Microsoft .NET framework and n-tier e-commerce and web application development.
Further, Brian has maintained numerous executive positions where he applies management capabilities in the field of developing marketing and strategy efforts to improve and enhance web-based technologies.
Brian is a member of the Microsoft Business Process Integration Virtual Technology Specialist team, and works with the BPI product groups to help them in the marketplace. Brian is also a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Visual Studio Solution Architect award.
Slide Deck: http://brianhprince.com/Documents/Intro%20to%20WF%20and%20BTS.ppt
The term Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become ubiquitous in our industry. Unfortunately, that has led to massive hype that makes it difficult to understand and distinguish the real value of adapting SOA principles. The current definition also suffers from technology-centric views that are based on the technology environment in use today.
Sam will concentrate on the Design Patterns that distinguish Service-Orientatation and how to apply them to your designs. Upon these principles, we look at their real-world implementation in WCF ("Indigo") and using WCF for real world demos.
 Sam Gentile is internationally known and recognized for his comprehensive expert Microsoft and .NET knowledge, and has been acknowledged by Microsoft as an Solutions Architect MVP. Sam is also an INETA Speaker, having delivered .NET training to user groups and companies all over the world. Sam is employed by a major international firm as an Agile Software Architect and Team Lead. His team utilizes full Agile practices as well as WinFX technologies like WCF, and WinFX to rapidly deliver business value. Sam has delivered over ten .NET based solutions into the market as well as provided expertise for a number of companies such as Microsoft, Adesso Systems, BCGI, Groove and Pacific Mindworks. Sam maintains a busy Agile WinFX blog at: http://codebetter.com/blogs/sam.gentile/
(Sam was also a guest on .NET Rocks! Show number 45)
Artifacts (slides/code) from Sam's visit: Demo.zip (561.23 KB) OhioWCF2006.pdf (4.36 MB)
Writing high quality software is hard; however, recent years have seen an influx of tools to help developers write better code. This talk is split into two segments: how to write quality software with free .NET tools (NUnit, NCover, FxCop) and how to write quality software with the new Visual Studio Team System Developer Edition.
VSTSDeveloper Edition provides several tools to ensure we write quality code. Many existing tools, such as FxCop for static code analysis, are now fully integrated within VSTS Developer Edition. New tools for unit testing and code coverage have also been added. In this session, we'll see how to create and run your unit tests, how to review test coverage across test cases, as well as how to use the static code analysis tool to ensure your code conforms to design guidelines.
David is a C# MVP and independent consultant specializing in application architecture and development for the Microsoft .NET platform. David is very active in the .NET community as he is the co-leader of the Central Ohio .NET Developers Group ( www.condg.org) and is the founder of the Columbus Geek Dinner. He’s also the co-founder/co-organizer of the Day of .NET events ( www.dayof.net) and maintains a .NET-focused blog at www.arcware.net. David is also a semi-frequent speaker at .NET user groups, code camps, and other conferences such as the Visual Studio Developers Conference and the Heartland Developers Conference.
Dave's slides: WritingQualityCode.zip (786.94 KB)
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to build you own Windows Mobile device? If you are like me you are probably a software person looking at the embedded world with more than a little trepidation. Come with me as I explain my journey building a Windows Mobile device to do in car entertainment.
In this session we'll talk through picking a device platform and things to look for in a design board. Once we've gone through that we will jump into Platform Builder and learn what it means to build a Windows Mobile platform to actually run your system. Lastly, we will actually build and test a .Net application running on the platform we have just built.
David White
is a principal in GSD Telematics. GSD Telematics was formed in 2005 to provide a programmable platform for in vehicle Telematics for everyone. Before that he was an Architect in the Microsoft Industry Solution Group focusing on the Automotive and Industrial Equipment Vertical accounts. He has over 17 year's enterprise experience across many disparate platforms and has spent over 10 of that in the automotive industry. After spending time working on enterprise mainframe applications on MVS he moved to the Unix/VAX arena and then on to the Microsoft arena. He has used almost all the major development paradigms over this time (J2EE, DNA, CORBA, etc.) and advised customers on technology decisions related to development and architecture with regards to Microsoft products and how they fit into the customers overall architecture. He had been with Microsoft for 8 years.
CodeRush and Refactor! are two powerful IDE tools by Developer Express that increase productivity while coding. Both tools are based on the DXCore API, which is freely available from Developer Express. Dustin Campbell, one of the people responsible for their existence, took us on a tour of how to use these tools to build software faster. Our Ninja class and throwing star collection were created with blinding speed and precision! Dustin also demonstrated how to create a custom DXCore plugin from scratch, enabling you to create your own refactorings that will work across multiple versions of Visual Studio.
Relevant Links:
Developer Express: http://www.devexpress.com/
CodeRush: http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/CodeRush/
Refactor! Pro : http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Refactor/
Screencasts showing these tools in action (impressive): http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/CodeRush/Training.xml
Dustin Campbell is a lead developer for Developer Express Inc. and is responsible for the low-level plumbing of the popular CodeRush and Refactor! tools for Visual Studio. He is an expert in many advanced areas of .NET and specializes in design patterns, refactoring and object-oriented design. In addition, Dustin is one of the few developers in the world that can boast to have rewritten .NET reflection simply because it wasn't fast or powerful enough.
User group leaders Greg Huber and Jason Follas brought their Media Center road show presentation back home, and gave the small group in attendance an overview of Media Center, Alternatives to Media Center, The 10-foot Experience, Developing for Media Center, and using the Xbox 360 as an Extender.
nwnug_mce.zip (3.6 MB)
Bill Wagner presented on Generics in the C# language, the CLR, and several tips and tricks for utilizing generics in common programming tasks. At the end, he also provided an overview of the upcoming Language Integrated Query (LINQ), an important new feature in C# 3.0.
A commercial software developer and co-founder of SRT Solutions, Inc., Bill Wagner facilitates adoption of .NET in clients’ product and enterprise development. His principal strengths include the core framework, the C# language, Smart Clients, and service oriented architecture and design. In 2003 Microsoft recognized his .NET expertise appointing him Regional Director for Michigan.
A frequent writer and speaker, Bill’s work is published in ASP.NET Pro and Visual Studio Magazine. He is the author of C# Core Language Little Black Book and Effective C#.
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!
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.
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)
July 26 2005: Visual Studio 2005 Team Server
Drew Robbins presented many features of Visual Studio 2005.
June 28 2005: Shifting Gears With C# & TSQL
Joseph Poirier presented an application he wrote for a local company that touched on areas of SQLCE 2, .NET Compact Framework, and C#.
April 26 2005: .NET Pub Club Meeting
We met at Mr. Beefy's after the MSDN event. The group had a great opportunity to meet members from the MSDN, and were able to discuss .NET technology while enjoying food and drinks.
March 28th 2005: Microsoft Reporting Services
Cem Demircioglu presented on Reporting Services (RS), a new business intelligence tool designed by Microsoft to author, manage and deliver interactive Web-based reports. RS enabled the Hirzel Canning Company to transform valuable enterprise data into shared information for insightful, timely decisions. After integrating it with a statistical forecasting engine, RS became their central business intelligence portal with over-the-Web, real-time, and interactive forecasting capabilities. At the last stage of the project, Hirzel moved the archival data from relational databases to multidimensional OLAP databases and utilized SQL Server Analysis Services. This presentation covered challenges, real world solutions, and a demonstration of the technologies.
slides-2005-03-28.zip (1.64 MB)
Update (10/24/2005): Cem now works for Microsoft with Reporting Services technologies!
February 22 2005: Agile Software Development & ASP.NET Code Generator
Ken Kutz presented on Agile Software Development and also demonstrated an automated ASP.NET code generator. Ken explained how Agile methodologies reduce cost and risk while improving customer satisfaction and maximimizing return on investment. The presentation emphasized the "People and Process" aspects of software development. Ken also demonstrated a web-based ASP.NET code generator he has created (with some help) that generates T-SQL stored procedures, data access classes, edit pages, feature-rich data grids, dynamic data-driven email lists, statistics, Flash-based graphs, Excel and PDF output, web services, and dynamically generated clickable flowcharts that work with SQL Server databases.
January 25 2005: Windows XP Media Center Edition
Greg Huber (President of NWNUG, Microsoft MVP) presented "Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005" (MCE 2005). MCE 2005 helps bring the power of the PC to your living room and developers can easily take advantage of its API to develop applications. Greg demonstrated how a web service could be consumed by a web application, all integrated into the MCE framework. This presentation was a nice survey of MCE's feature set, limitations, and competition.
Oct 26 2004: MSMQ
Greg Huber (.NET MVP, President NWNUG) presented on How to Leverage MSMQ in .NET Applications. Have you ever developed a Web application that requires extensive processing? Ever had long running Web pages that often time out in the browser? Performing asynchronous processing through MSMQ messaging might be the answer. The following components were covered: MSMQ, .NET Service, writing to a MSMQ from an ASP.NET web page.
Sept 28 2004: .NET 2.0
Alex Lowe presented on ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0.
August 31 2004: Web Site Security
Paul Litwin presented on Hacked: Understanding and Preventing Web Site Attacks
Let's face it-there are a lot of unruly types trying to, at best, make you look foolish, and, at worst, steal from you, your company, or your customers. In this session, you'll see how easy it is for hackers to launch cross site scripting, SQL injection, eavesdropping, input tampering, and related attacks against your ASP.NET Web sites. More importantly, you'll learn how to use validation controls, stored procedures, HtmlEncode, and other measures to lock down your sites and sleep better at night.
July 27 2004: Web Service Extensions (WSE)
Greg Huber presented on securing your web services with WSE 2.0 (Web Service Extensions). The first half of the presentation covered web service techniques and best practices, as well as a code walkthrough. In the second half, Greg presented on how to add Web Service Extensions 2.0 to your .NET project, the importance of adding security to web services, and how to add security.
June 29 2004: DotNetNuke
Patrick J Santry of wwwcoder.com and MVP presented on DotNetNuke, an open source portal (built on the original IBuySpy portal). DotNetNuke provides automated content management capabilities and tools to maintain a dynamic and 100% interactive data-driven web site. The free, portal framework provides several tools for managing your Website, for example, site logging, role security, vendor and banner management, file management, and more. NWNUG will be migrating to DotNetNuke in the near future as well!
April 27 2004: Development Best Practices
John Mason from Microsoft Great Plains (Findlay) covered best practices for developers, .Net performance optimization, and best practices in general for software development.
John is a seasoned presenter and has covered past topics such as .Net Security, C# Design Patterns, hard-core debugging (using WinDBG and CDB). He has delivered a number of workshops and related content, and has also worked with many large customers of Microsoft who have had development-project meltdown(s). John also gave the DevDays 2002 .Net Security Speech and demo in both Atlanta (GA) and Charlotte (NC). Before leaving GA last year, John has also presented a technical speech covering .Net at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
March 30 2004: Whidbey
Drew Robbins (Columbus .NET UG leader & consultant) came up and presented in detail about ASP.NET Whidbey.
Feb 24 2004: MS-SQL Reporting Services
A new member of the NWNUG board, Aaron Weiker, gave a Fly-By presentation on Microsoft SQL Reporting Services. We also discussed upcoming changes to the website and meetings. Look for new community development projects in the near future to get in | |