Contagious Curiosity

Leaving Microsoft

lynnlangit — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:34:34 GMT

This will be last blog post to this blog, as I am leaving Microsoft effective Monday, October 17.

Post-Microsoft I’ll be contracting (data projects, both production and education) and spending more time growing ‘Teaching Kids Programming’ around the world. Two years ago someone dear to me gave me the book below, little did I know then how true it would prove…

Tomorrow I go to Africa, to speak at TechEd Africa on my last day of work for Microsoft. Wish me luck. Follow my new adventures at http://www.lynnlangit.com

New blog location for SoCalDevGal

lynnlangit — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:40:21 GMT

Check out my new blog (‘Toward Data Craftsmanship) at http://www.LynnLangit.com

Also note my twitter handle is now @lynnlangit.

I’m preparing for 10 live talks on SQL Server and SQL Azure in October alone, so RSS to get lots of new content as I post after each talk this month. I am also preparing a series on BI in Denali (SQL Server vNext), starting in November.

SQL Azure Developer Tools

lynnlangit — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:07:37 GMT

Deck for my presentation this Saturday at SQL Saturday #95 in San Diego – it has been updated and includes information about the newly-updated SQL Azure management portal.

SQL Azure for SQL Saturday #95

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SQL Server and SQL Azure for Developers

lynnlangit — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:54:09 GMT

Here are the decks from my presentations for TechEd Australia this week. The sessions will be recorded. I’ll post the links after – thanks.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Features for Developers

View more presentations from Lynn Langit.

And Here

SQL Azure Tools and Frameworks for Developers

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Here is the demo code

1) T-SQL - here
2) OData and SQL Azure - here
3) Entity Framework - here

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 for Developers

lynnlangit — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 00:13:59 GMT

Here’s my deck for my presentation for TechEd / New Zealand (to be delivered live and recorded next week in Auckland). Below the deck are links to the demo files as well.

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 for Developers

View more presentations from Lynn Langit.

Demos on

1) New features in T-SQL – here
2) Entity Framework and SQL Server - here

A Technical Conference Filled with Women

lynnlangit — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:11:58 GMT

Ok now that I have your attention (!), I am going to write a bit about my first experience at the international, annual Agile conference. Agile 2011 was held in Salt Lake City, Utah last week. I attended and spoke (on ‘Teaching Kids to Program Using Agile Practices’) and had a GREAT time. This conference had 1600 people, from all over the world. This year was the largest attendance at the annual conference on record.

Attending and speaking at conferences is a large part of my job. On average 1 speak at one or more technical conferences PER WEEK, so around 50-100 PER YEAR. I have been doing this for around 5 years now. So, you can do the math on how many conference I’ve been a part of since I started working as an evangelist. Prior to attending the Agile conference, the best gender-balanced ratio I’d ever experienced at a technical conference was at the annual US SQLPass summit. However I am estimating that was around 25% women.

Agile 2011 was striking for not only the number of women attendees (nearly 50%), but also the number of women speakers. There were also both open and closing keynotes delivered by women too. As a technical women, what is the effect on me and the other women attending? I was struck by one feeling – comfort and the desire to participate. I noticed over and over that I was not the only one -- women participated more frequently during sessions, led scheduled sessions and even ran some their own sessions on an ad-hoc basis. So, how was this achieved? What did this conference ‘look like’? As you may have guessed, it didn’t look like any other technical conference I’d ever attended.

I’ll list aspects of this conference that were different than other conferences:

1) Multi-modal – instead of tracks, there were 20 stages, there were scheduled sessions of 5 minutes to 3 hours. These stages were based on people, i.e. roles and NOT on particular technologies or products. There was also an unConference preCon held openSpace style. Below is a graphic showing the different stages.

2) Flexible – there was ample time in the schedule and space at the conference for ad hoc sessions, the open Jam room was large comfortable and conveniently open for the entire conference. Below is a sample of how a spontaneous talk was ‘advertised’ on Twitter. Note the format was ‘PechaKucha’(20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, auto-advance, 5 minute limit). There were also white boards outside the #openJam area post, solicit interest and to advertise ad hoc talks and sessions. Formal sessions often ‘continued’ in the Open Jam space after the original allotted time had passed..

3) Creative – there were whiteboards, post-it notes, actual toys (Jenga, LEGO bricks board games, etc…) everywhere. Attendees drew various thoughts and projects on large, shared art spaces. As a LEGO Serious Play trained facilitator myself, I was happy to pair-lead a session showing how LSP works with another facilitator (and Agile coach) from Toronto. People were drawing, writing and scribbling all over the place – a neat history of the Agile Alliance evolved the Open Jam room during the conference (shown below).

Of course there were post-it notes EVERYWHERE too!

4) Fun – Magicians, Trampoline artists, Parkour performers and a rock band all entertained us at various times. Also many of the sessions included both theory and one or more hands-on activities. These activities at the least got everyone up and moving around the room. Sometimes the hands-on activities involved coding too. The workshop we presented (on TKP), included both of these elements – deck here – and was very well received by our attending group.

The slide below cracked me up and is from a session I attended on communication (most of the session was conducted via games or activities in small groups). By the way, I’ll decline to answer the question posed in the slide for now too!

5) Human-centered, social and international– there were large screens with twitter feeds with the #Agile2011 hashtag all over the conference venue. Attendees used twitter to communicate about what they were seeing, learning and who they wanted to meet with. Below is a small sample from the tweet stream.

Also there was not only one, but two special sessions to welcome and to orientate new attendees to Agile. These sessions were well attended (more than 400 people in the first one) and really helped first-time attendees to feel comfortable. Many questions were asked during these presentations. All questions were answered patiently and respectfully.

Another type of session that was interesting was ‘Coaches Corner’. Note again the multi-modal formats that attendees could use (shown below). It was interesting to see that every time I stopped by the Open Jam area someone was in the Coaches Corner.

Another ‘session’ showing inclusivity for those newly attending (or attending on their own) was ‘dinner with a stranger’. Implementation was simple – just set up 4 white boards (sign ups) with restaurant names and let people sign up. It was neat to see how many people took advantage of this opportunity to meet someone new.

One of my favorite sessions was on understanding the implementation of Agile practices on non-Western cultures. The abstract is shown below.

In this session, Ali Zewail from Egypt led a fascinating discussion comparing cultural traits with Agile tenants. He also included his own practical experience adjusting his implementation for his team in Egypt.

6) Respectful of experience – celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Agile manifesto, 15/17 of the original authors of the Manifesto attended, spoke and were accessible for side conversations (easily identified by the shirts they wore). Further support of people with experience was that one keynote speaker (Linda Rising) was 70 years old. Linda Rising’s closing keynote captured the audience and was one of the highlights of the entire conference for me.

Linda’s talk about the scientifically-based differences between the Fixed and Agile mindsets (shown in the slide below) are literally going to get me to make some major changes in my life. After her talk is posted on-line, I’ll add a link to it here.

7) Forward-looking – there was a ‘stage’ called ‘New Horizons and New Voices’ to focus on the future of Agile. To get a sense of this, listen to this snippet from the talk ‘How Lean Startup Pushes Agile to the Next Level’ from presenter, Abby Fichtner (HackerChick and Microsoft Evangelist) – also here is her complete deck on slideshare

How Lean Startup Pushes Agile to the Next Level from Abby Fichtner, Hacker Chick on Vimeo.

8) Technical – of course we also built things, using Agile techniques during the conference. Below is a tweet from Llewellyn thanking his pair programming buddies for helping him to code up a new version of the Virtual Proctor for our TKP courseware. This version stores screenshots from the kids on the web (i.e. a configurable http:// endpoint), rather than in a local shared folder. Llewellyn built this to overcome the (shared folder) port blocking we’ve often encountered at conferences and at schools.

Also there were sessions like ‘How Functional Programming affects Agile Programmers’ and more. Most often code examples were shown in Ruby, Java or C# – sometimes other languages were shown as well.

I chose to attend a number of sessions around the implementation of Test-Driven Development. There was quite a lot of (heated!) discussion in Bob Martin’s (@UncleBob) session on this same topic. He started with the code shown below (Java), then asked attendees to pair up and code some more. It was interesting to see how easily and spontaneously the group did this – I heard ‘Want to code in Ruby? What about C#?’ etc…people were really just there to learn to code better.

I was happy to see another hands-on type of session at the Live Aid labs. Detail is shown below. As many of my readers know, I am very big fan of getting hands on experience in new technical practices via contributions to non-profits.

9) Respectful of speakers – I felt especially privileged to have been a speaker at this conference. The submission process was arduous. This was the longest and most detailed submission that I HAVE EVER DONE for a single talk. Twice we added more detail and answered questions about the intent and content of our submissions in addition to having fully and completely written out our abstract. However after we were accepted, we were very well taken care of. Accepted speakers (up to 2 per session) get conference registration fee waived and the majority of the hotel stay covered. If you believe you have value to add to future Agile conference, I encourage you to apply to speak.

So, what kind of people attend Agile? Below is a breakout (from 2010). I’d like to see even more developers attend next year – what about you?

Here’s a highlights video from Agile 2011 as well

I had a fantastic time at Agile 2011 and would highly recommend attending and/or speaking there.

Teaching Kids Programming with Agile Practices

lynnlangit — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:54:18 GMT

Here’s our deck from the international Agile2011 conference, where we are presenting tomorrow. Our talk is called ‘Teaching Kids Programming with Agile Practices.’

Teaching kids programming with agile 2011

View more presentations from Llewellyn Falco

SQL Server Developer Tools (Juneau)–first look

lynnlangit — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:13:38 GMT

I have been preparing a talk (for an internal Microsoft product training) on the new SQL Server Developer Tools (or SSDT – code named ‘Juneau), based on the SQL Server vNext CTP 3 (code named – ‘Denali’).

I encourage you to try this out. To do so, you’ll need to have Visual Studio 2010, with SP1 installed. Then you’ll probably want to download and install a version SQL Server Denali CTP 3, AFTER that you can download and install the CTP for Juneau.

*Note – if you prefer to install ONLY the Juneau tools and NOT Denali CTP 3, you can do this. When I ran the install, I first got some failures in the installer, but as I clicked continue, the install did succeed eventually.*

Start by taking a look at the new node in the Visual Studio Server Explorer>SQL Server (as shown below with the [new] local instance, a SQL Azure instance, a SQL Denali instance, and a SQL Server 2008 R2 instance). Right click on any database in this node to try out the new ‘Create new project’ (for off-line database development) or the ‘Schema Compare’ features.

Of particular interest to SQL Azure developers is that the Juneau tools are version-aware. What this means is that you can target your development to SQL Azure (or other versions) and the tools will provide you with warnings, highlights, etc…in your T-SQL code that are specific to that particular version.

There are a couple of good talks from TechEd North America on the topic of Juneau as well. The first one covers the new features around database lifecycle management.

The second video covers future features (the bits don’t seem to be released to the public yet) in Entity Framework and Juneau.

As I work on my talk I am wondering how those of you who have been using ‘Data Dude’ are finding SSDT? Drop me a note via this blog.

Also, I’ll publish the presentation after I give it.

SoCalDevGal on TWIC9

lynnlangit — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:40:53 GMT

I co-hosted the MSDN show ‘This Week in Channel 9’ with Brian Keller – enjoy!

Teaching 10 year olds to code using the MVC pattern

lynnlangit — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 16:08:14 GMT

Teaching ADLIBS

TKP Tips: Teaching the SmallBasic ADLIBS recipe

The parts of the ADLIBS recipe are as follows:

1) Recipe – guided line-by-line translation, to teach core concepts. For ADLIBS, you are building on what the kids learned in all of the previous drawing recipes (core IDE and language concepts such as objects, methods, etc…) and For loops. In this recipe we work on mastering the idea of variables, strings and string concatenation. Also we include MessageBox API. The core recipe is QWF808. The cheat sheet is NXK897. Below is the teacher video for the core recipe.

2) Variation – instructor – led verbal refactoring and modifications to add concepts to the solution. In this variation you will be teaching new concepts that relate to MVC. Specifically, we recommend that you break the variation in into two parts. The first part introduces the Parser.Merge object. This is intended to replace the string concatenation. This variation also introduces a type of Array (we refer to it as a map). We made a video to help you teach this below. We recommend that you rename the original objects from <objectName> to <objectName1> to help the students to understand the transition.

The second part of the variation introduces the idea of a Viewer, which can display an RTF file. The idea is that the RTF file will serve as a formatting template. What you are really teaching here is the MVC (or model-view-controller) pattern. Also it teaches the students about working with the file system. Below is a video showing how to teach this part.

3) Recap – presented by the instructors, re-do the recipe to reinforce core concepts. You’ll want to particularly emphasize common mistakes with the string manipulation syntax.

4) Quiz – There is no quiz for this recipe at this time.

5) Homework – There is no homework for this recipe at this time.

6) Xtras - There are no Xtras at this time.

We are really excited about the growth of TKP. We welcome feedback on the how we can make these videos better for you as TKP teachers.

Happy teaching!

Teaching Kids Programming using the Intentional Method

lynnlangit — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 02:12:52 GMT

Here’s the presentation deck for our talk at the national Computer Science teacher’s conference in NYC this July – enjoy.

Teaching Kids Programming using the Intentional Method

View more presentations from Lynn Langit.

Approval Tests–A Library for All Developers

lynnlangit — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:16:13 GMT

Here’s the deck from my talk at SoCalCodeCamp in San Diego on the free, open source, ApprovalTests library.

Approval Tests - A Library for All Developers

View more presentations from Lynn Langit

Here the demo sample code can be found on CodePlex – here.

Here’s a demo on using Approval Tests to approve ASP.NET pages

Lanyrd.com–Great for Technical Speakers

lynnlangit — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:18:28 GMT

While at fooCamp this weekend in Sebastopol, among many interesting people, I met the founders of a new site – Lanyrd.com. They call themselves a ‘social conference directory’ and from my first try-out – I LOVE their services and site.

Take a look at the Lanyrd page for the upcoming SoCalCodCamp (below) conference:

They’ve got the ability to list conferences, sessions, speakers and, most importantly, in addition to the typical metadata such as conference location, agenda information, etc…Lanyrd allows you link metadata to speakers (such as books authored) and to conferences and/or their sessions (such as slide decks, notes, etc..).

On the Lanyrd profile page (shown below), you can see what conferences I am speaking at, what conferences I am tracking (interested in), etc..Also you get links to all information related to my talks, such as videos, notes, decks, and so forth.

On the Lanyrd calendar page (shown below), you see your conferences and on another tab, the conference that your friends are interested in/ going to/speaking at. Currently Lanyrd shows only your Twitter friends conferences, although the founders told me they plan to add other social media connections.

Very useful! Check it out.

TKP Tips: Teaching the SmallBasic HOUSES recipe

lynnlangit — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:39:36 GMT

This is generally the second recipe the kids work with (the first one is SQUARE – and there are lots of tips and videos on how we teach programming generally, i.e. using Agile methods and specifically for that first recipe on TKP here. Please go there FIRST if need be.

In this blog post, I’ll talk about how to teach the second recipe – HOUSES.

I’ll start with a reminder. All recipes have (or will have) 5 parts. To teach a full-set for each recipe takes between 60 and 90 minutes, depending on the skill of the kids, teachers, number of kids, etc…Each recipe is designed to teach one-to-three core programming concepts, such as For loops, If statements, Subroutines, etc…The recipe library is sequential (easy-to-hard, top-to-bottom) and can be found here.

The parts of the HOUSES recipe are as follows:

1) Recipe – guided line-by-line translation, to teach core concepts. For HOUSES, you are building on what the kids learned in SQUARE (core IDE and language concepts such as objects, methods, etc…) and For loops. In HOUSES we work on mastering the idea of variable creation and assignment and also that of subroutines. We have recently simplified the core recipe to more narrowly focus on the these core ideas. A teaching video for the core HOUSES recipe is below. Also we’ve published ‘Cheat Sheets’ for each recipe, which give you the translated code and the order to teach (line numbers) so that the kids can run the recipe after each line translated and get visual feedback. Go here (scroll down) for the HOUSES ‘cheat sheet’.

2) Variation – instructor - led verbal refactoring and modifications to add concepts to the solution. Next we have the original HOUSES recipe video, which we now recommend as a variation. This adds more subroutines and you can also introduce the “If” construct as time allows.

3) Recap – presented by the instructors, re-do the recipe to reinforce core concepts

4) Quiz – facilitated--pairs reach 100% mastery by working together. Remember to do a recap, instructors repeating the recipe BEFORE you get the kids started with the quiz. We’ve also made a teacher-video of the quiz segment.

5) Homework – same as quiz. Finally, if you have time, you can facilitate the students in doing the homework for HOUSES. This can also be done as an ‘at home’ assignment if need be. The video below gives you some facilitation tips.

We are really excited about the growth of TKP. We welcome feedback on the how we can make these videos better for you as TKP teachers.

Happy teaching!

TKP Tips: Making a SmallBasic runnable flash drive

lynnlangit — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:23:18 GMT

We discovered a shortcut that makes teaching #TKP courseware with SmallBasic even easier. You can put everything you need for each pair of students on a single flash drive – SmallBasic, SmallBasic Extensions, Courseware, etc… AND you can run SmallBasic itself directly from this drive. So there’s no need to install anything on a the machine you are running on. The machine just needs to have .NET Framework 3.5 w/SP1 or greater (Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7). Here’s what you need to do to set it up:

1) Download SmallBasic onto a flash drive.
2) Install it on the Flash Drive
3) Download the SmallBasic extensions (from CodePlex) onto the Flash Drive and unzip
4) Copy the unzipped files (Proctor.txt, SmallBasicFun.dll, SmallBasicFun.XML) into the ..Microsoft\SmallBasic\lib folder as shown below:

Now you can launch SmallBasic directly from the Flash Drive. To do so you just need to follow the direction below:

1) Double-click the SB.exe icon as shown highlighted below

In the flash drive you will find some other goodies in the included ‘Resources’ folder that you may want to use:

1) Recipes – a zip file that contains all 14 recipes – just unzip and enjoy!
2) Slides – a pdf file that contains slides covering core programming concepts, such as ‘For’ loops, ‘If’ statements, etc…
3) More – inside of the unzipped Recipes, we’ve added our new Homework exercises

These are shown below:

If you’d like to just unzip our drive, get the SmallBasicFlashDrive.zip file here.

Let us know how this works for you – and watch for new recipes and new teacher training resources at TKP soon.

Getting Started With SQL Azure Development

lynnlangit — Sun, 29 May 2011 18:31:13 GMT

**this is an update to the article published late last year in MSDN Magazine – it includes information current as of May 29th, including the TechEd 2011 SQL Azure announcements**

In addition to the information in this article, I recently did a series of presentations on SQL Azure for the SSWUG – below is a video preview.

Microsoft Windows Azure offers several choices for data storage. These include Windows Azure storage and SQL Azure. You may choose to use one or both in your particular project. Windows Azure storage currently contains three types of storage structures: tables, queues or blobs (which can optionally be virtual machines).

SQL Azure is a relational data storage service in the cloud. Some of the benefits of this offering are the ability to use a familiar relational development model that includes most of the standard SQL Server language (T-SQL), tools and utilities. Of course, working with well-understood relational structures in the cloud, such as tables, views and stored procedures also results in increased developer productivity when working in this new platform type. Other benefits include a reduced need for physical database administration tasks to server setup, maintenance and security as well as built-in support for reliability, high availability and scalability.

I won’t cover Windows Azure storage or make a comparison between the two storage modes here. You can read more about these storage options in the July 2010 Data Points column . It is important to note that Windows Azure tables are NOT relational tables. Another way to think about the two storage offerings is that Windows Azure includes Microsoft’s NoSQL cloud solutions and SQL Azure is the RDMS-cloud offering. The focus of this article is on understanding the capabilities included in SQL Azure.

In article I will be explaining differences between SQL Server and SQL Azure. You need to understand these differences in detail so that you can appropriately leverage your current knowledge of SQL Server as you work on projects that use SQL Azure as a data source. This article was originally published in September 2010. I have updated it as of June 2011.

If you are new to cloud computing you’ll want to do some background reading on Windows Azure before reading this article. A good place to start is the MSDN Developer Cloud Center.

Getting Started with SQL Azure

To start working with SQL Azure, you’ll first need to set up an account. If you are a MSDN subscriber, then you can use up to three SQL Azure databases (maximum size 1 GB each) for up to 16 months (details) at as a developer sandbox. You may prefer to sign up for a regular SQL Azure account (storage and data transfer fees apply), to do so go here. Yet another option is to get a trial 30-day account (no credit card required). To do the latter, go here and use signup code - DPEWR02.

After you’ve signed up for your SQL Azure account, the simplest way to initially access it is via the web portal at windows.azure.com. You must first sign in with the Windows Live ID that you’ve associated to your Windows Azure account. After you sign in, you can create your server installation and get started developing your application. The number of servers and / or databases you are allowed to create will be dependent on the type of account you’ve signed up for.

An example of the SQL Azure web management portal is shown in Figure 1. Here you can see a server and its associated databases. You’ll note that there is also a tab on this portal for managing the Firewall Settings for this particular SQL Azure installation.

Figure 1 Summary Information for a SQL Azure Server

As you initially create your SQL Azure server installation, it will be assigned a random string for the server name. You’ll generally also set the administrator username, password, geographic server location and firewall rules at the time of server creation. You can select the physical (data center) location for your SQL Azure installation at the time of server creation. You will be presented with a list of locations to choose from. As of this writing, Microsoft has 6 physical data centers, located world-wide to select from. If your application front-end is built in Windows Azure, you have the option to locate both that installation and your SQL Azure installation in the same geographic location by associating the two installations together by using an Affinity Group.

By default there is no client access to your newly-created server, so you’ll first have to create firewall rules for all client IPs. SQL Azure uses port 1433, so make sure that that port is open for your client application as well. When connecting to SQL Azure you’ll use the username@servername format for your username. SQL Azure supports SQL Authentication only; Windows authentication is not supported. Multiple Active Result Set (MARS) connections are supported.

Open connections will ‘time out’ after 30 minutes of inactivity. Also connections can be dropped for long-running queries or transactions or excessive resource usage. Development best practices in your applications around connections are to open, use and then close those connections manually, to include retry connection logic for dropped connections and to avoid caching connections because of these behaviors. Another best practice is to encrypt your connection string to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. For best practices and code samples for SQL Azure connections (including a suggested library which includes patterned connection retry logic), see this TechNET blog post.

You will be connected to the master database by if you don’t specify a database name in the connection string. In SQL Azure the T-SQL statement USE is not supported for changing databases, so you will generally specify the database you want to connect to in the connection string (assuming you want to connect to a database other than master). Figure 2 below, shows an example of an ADO.NET connection:

Figure 2 Format for SQL Azure connection string

Setting up Databases

After you’ve successfully created and connected to your SQL Azure server, then you’ll usually want to create one or more databases. Although you can create databases using the SQL Azure portal, you may prefer to do so using some of the other tools, such as SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2. By default, you can create up to 149 databases for each SQL Azure server installation, if you need more databases than that; you must call the Azure business desk to have this limit increased.

When creating a database you must select the maximum size. The current options for sizing (and billing) are Web or Business Edition. Web Edition, the default, supports databases of 1 or 5 GB total. Business Edition supports databases of up to 50 GB, sized in increments of 10 GB – in other words, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 GB. Currently, both editions are feature-equivalent.

You set the size limit for your database when you create it by using the MAXSIZE keyword. You can change the size limit or the edition (Web or Business) after the initial creation using the ALTER DATABASE statement. If you reach your size or capacity limit for the edition you’ve selected, then you will see the error code 40544. The database size measurement does NOT include the master database, or any database logs. For more detail about sizing and pricing, see this link Although you set a maximum size, you are billed based on actual storage used.

It’s important to realize that when you are creating a new database on SQL Azure, you are actually creating three replicas of that database. This is done to ensure high availability. These replicas are completely transparent to you. Currently, these replicas are in the same data center. The new database appears as a single unit for your purposes. Failover is transparent and part of the service you are paying for is a SLA of 99.9% uptime.

After you’ve created a database, you can quickly get the connection string information for it by selecting the database in the list on the portal and then clicking the ‘Connection Strings’ button. You can also test connectivity via the portal by clicking the ‘Test Connectivity’ button for the selected database. For this test to succeed you must enable the ‘Allow Microsoft Services to Connect to this Server’ option on the Firewall Rules tab of the SQL Azure portal.

Creating Your Application

After you’ve set up your account, created your server, created at least one database and set a firewall rule so that you can connect to the database, then you can start developing your application using this data source.

Unlike with Windows Azure data storage options such as tables, queues or blobs, when you are using SQL Azure as a data source for your project, there is nothing to install in your development environment. If you are using Visual Studio 2010, you can just get started – no additional SDKs, tools or anything else are needed.

Although many developers will choose to use a Windows Azure front-end with a SQL Azure back-end, this configuration is NOT required. You can use ANY front-end client with a supported connection library such as ADO.NET or ODBC. This could include, for example, an application written in Java or PHP. Of note is that connecting to SQL Azure via OLE DB is currently not supported.

If you are using Visual Studio 2010 to develop your application, then you can take advantage of the included ability to view or create many types of objects in your selected SQL Azure database installation directly from the Visual Studio Server Explorer View. These objects are Tables, Views, Stored Procedures, Functions or Synonyms. You can also see the data associated with these objects using this viewer. For many developers using Visual Studio 2010 as their primary tool to view and manage SQL Azure data will be sufficient. The Server Explorer View window is shown in Figure 3. Both a local installation of a database and a cloud-based instance are shown. You’ll note that the tree nodes differ slightly in the two views. For example there is no Assemblies node in the cloud installation because custom assemblies are not supported in SQL Azure.

Figure 3 Viewing Data Connections in Visual Studio

Of note also in Visual Studio is that using the Entity Framework with SQL Azure is supported. Also you may choose to use Data-Tier application packages (or DACPACs) in Visual Studio. You can create, import and / or modify DACPACS for SQL Azure schemas in VS2010.

Another developer tool that can now use to create applications which use SQL Azure as a data source is Visual Studio Light Switch. This is a light-weight developer environment, based on the idea of ‘data and screens’ created for those who are tasked with part-time coding, most especially those who create ‘departmental applications. To try out the beta version of Visual Studio Light Switch go to this location . Shown below (Figure 4) is connecting to a SQL Azure data source using the Light Switch IDE.

Figure 4 Connecting to SQL Azure in Visual Studio Light Switch

If you are wish to use SQL Azure as a data source for Business Intelligence projects, then you’ll use Visual Studio Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008 (R2 version needed to connect to SQL Azure). In addition, Microsoft has begun a limited (invite-only) customer beta of SQL Azure Reporting Services, a version of SQL Server Reporting Services for Azure. Microsoft has announced that on the longer-term roadmap for SQL Azure, they are working to cloud-enable versions of the entire BI stack, that is Analysis Services, Integration Services and Reporting Services.

More forward-looking, Microsoft has announced that in vNext of Visual Studio the BI toolset will be integrated into the core product with full SQL Azure compatibility and intellisense. This project is code-named ‘Juneau’ and is expected to go into public beta later this year. For more information (and demo videos of Juneau) see this link.

As I mentioned earlier, another tool you may want to use to work with SQL Azure is SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2. Using SSMS, you actually have access to a fuller set of operations for SQL Azure databases using SSMS than in Visual Studio 2010. I find that I use both tools, depending on which operation I am trying to complete. An example of an operation available in SSMS (and not in Visual Studio 2010) is creating a new database using a T-SQL script. Another example is the ability to easily performance index operations (create, maintain, delete and so on). An example is shown in Figure 5 below.

Although working with SQL Azure databases in SSMS 2008 R2 is quite similar to working with an on-premises SQL Server instance, tasks and functionality are NOT identical. This is due mostly due to product differences. For example, you may remember that in SQL Azure the USE statement to CHANGE databases is NOT supported. A common way to do this when working in SSMS it is to right click an open query window, then click ‘Connection’>’Change connection’ on the context-sensitive menu and then to enter the next database connection information in the ‘Connect to Database Engine’ dialog box that pops up.

Generally when working in SSMS, if an option isn’t supported in SQL Azure either, you simply can’t see it such as folders in the Explorer tree not present; context-sensitive menu-options not available when connected to a SQL Azure instance, or you are presented with an error when you try to execute a command this isn’t supported in this version of SQL Server. You’ll also note that many of the features available with GUI interfaces for SQL Server with SSMS are exposed only via T-SQL script windows for SQL azure. These include common features, such as CREATE DATABASE, CREATE LOGIN, CREATE TABLE, CREATE USER, etc…

One tool that SQL Server DBAs often ‘miss’ in SQL Azure is SQL Server Agent. This functionality is NOT supported. However, there are 3^rd party tools as well as community projects, such as the one on CodePlex here which provide examples of using alternate technologies to create ‘SQL-Agent-like’ functionality for SQL Azure.

Figure 5 Using SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 to Manage SQL Azure

As mentioned in the discussion of Visual Studio 2010 support, newly released in SQL Server 2008 R2 is a data-tier application or DAC. DAC pacs are objects that combine SQL Server or SQL Azure database schemas and objects into a single entity.

You can use either Visual Studio 2010 (to build) or SQL Server 2008 R2 SSMS (to extract) to create a DAC from an existing database. If you wish to use Visual Studio 2010 to work with a DAC, then you’d start by selecting the SQL Server Data-Tier Application project type in Visual Studio 2010. Then, on the Solution Explorer, right-click your project name and click ‘Import Data Tier Application’. A wizard opens to guide you through the import process. If you are using SSMS, start by right-clicking on the database you want to use in the Object Explorer, click Tasks, and then click ‘Extract Data-tier Application’ to create the DAC. The generated DAC is a compressed file that contains multiple T-SQL and XML files. You can work with the contents by right-clicking the .dacpac file and then clicking Unpack. SQL Azure supports deleting, deploying, extracting, and registering DAC pacs, but does not support upgrading them. Figure 6 below, shows the template in Visual Studio 2010 for working with DACPACs

Figure 6 The ‘SQL Server Data-tier Application’ template in Visual Studio 2010 (for DACPACs)

Also of note is that Microsoft has released a CTP version of enhanced DACPACs, called BACPACs, that support import/export of schema AND data (via BCP). Find more information here . Another name for this set of functionality is the import/export tool for SQL Azure.

Another tool you can use to connect to SQL Azure is the Silverlight-based web tool called the SQL Azure Web Management tool shown in Figure 7 below. It’s intended as a zero-install client to manage SQL Azure installations. To access this tool navigate to the main Azure portal here, then click on the ‘Database’ node in the tree view on the left side. You will next click on the database that you wish to work with and then click on the ‘Manage’ button on the ribbon. This will open the login box for the web client. After you enter the login credentials, then a new web page will open which will allow you to work with that databases’ Tables, Views, Queries and Stored Procedures in a SQL Azure database installation.

Figure 7 Using the Silverlight Web Portal to manage a SQL Azure Database

Of course, because the portal is built on Silverlight, you can view, monitor and manage the exposed aspects of SQL Azure with any browser using the web management tool. Shown below in Figure 8 is the portal running on a MacOS with Google Chrome.

Figure 8 Using the Silverlight Web Portal to manage a SQL Azure Database on a Mac with Google Chrome

Still another tool you can use to connect to a SQL Azure database is SQLCMD (more information here ). Of note is that even though SQLCMD is supported, the OSQL command-line tool is not supported by SQL Azure.

Using SQL Azure

So now you’ve connected to your SQL Azure installation and have created a new, empty database. So what exactly can you do with SQL Azure? Specifically you may be wondering what are the limits on creating objects? And after those objects have been created, how do you populate those objects with data? As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, SQL Azure provides relational cloud data storage, but it does have some subtle feature differences to an on premise SQL Server installation. Starting with object creation, let’s look at some of the key differences between the two.

You can create the most commonly used objects in your SQL Azure database using familiar methods. The most commonly used relational objects (which include tables, views, stored procedures, indices, and functions) are all available. There are some differences around object creation though. I’ll summarize the differences in the next paragraph.

SQL Azure tables MUST contain a clustered index. Non-clustered indices CAN be subsequently created on selected tables. You CAN create spatial indices; you can NOT create XML indices. Heap tables are NOT supported. CLR types of Geo-spatial only types (such as Geography and Geometry) ARE supported. Also Support for the HierachyID data type IS included. Other CLR types are NOT supported. View creation MUST be the first statement in a batch. Also view (or stored procedure) creation with encryption is NOT supported. Functions CAN be scalar, inline or multi-statement table-valued functions, but can NOT be any type of CLR function.

There is a complete reference of partially supported T-SQL statements for SQL Azure on MSDN here .

Before you get started creating your objects, remember that you will connect to the master database if you do not specify a different one in your connection string. In SQL Azure, the USE (database) statement is not supported for changing databases, so if you need to connect to a database other than the master database, then you must explicitly specify that database in your connection string as shown earlier.

Data Migration and Loading

If you plan to create SQL Azure objects using an existing, on-premises database as your source data and structures, then you can simply use SSMS to script an appropriate DDL to create those objects on SQL Azure. Use the Generate Scripts Wizard and set the ‘Script for the database engine type’ option to ‘for SQL Azure’.

An even easier way to generate a script is to use the SQL Azure Migration Wizard available as a download from CodePlex here . With this handy tool you can generate a script to create the objects and can also load the data via bulk copy using bcp.exe.

You could also design a SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) package to extract and run a DML or DDL script. If you are using SSIS, you’d most commonly design a package that extracts the DDL from the source database, scripts that DDL for SQL Azure and then executes that script on one or more SQL Azure installations. You might also choose to load the associated data as part of this package’s execution path. For more information about working with SSIS here.

Also of note regarding DDL creation and data migration is the CTP release of SQL Azure Data Sync Services here). You can also see this service in action in a Channel 9 video here . Currently SQL Azure Data Sync services works via Synchronization Groups (HUB and MEMBER servers) and then via scheduled synchronization at the level of individual tables in the databases selected for synchronization. For even more about Data Sync listen in to this recent MSDN geekSpeak show by new SQL Azure MVP Ike Ellis on his experiences with SQL Azure Data Sync.

You can use the Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure to synchronize data between a data source and a SQL Azure installation. As of this writing, this tool is in CTP release and is available here . If you use this framework to perform subsequent or ongoing data synchronization for your application, you may also wish to download the associated SDK.

What if your source database is larger than the maximum size for the SQL Azure database installation? This could be greater than the absolute maximum of 50 GB for the Business Edition or some smaller limit based on the other program options.

Currently, customers must partition (or shard) their data manually if their database size exceeds the program limits. Microsoft has announced that it will be providing a federation (or auto-partitioning utility) for SQL Azure in the future. For more information about how Microsoft plans to implement federation, read here. To support federations new T-SQL syntax will be introduced. From the blog post referenced above, Figure 9, below, shows a conceptual representation of that new syntax.

Figure 9 SQL Azure Federation (conceptual syntax)

As of this writing SQL Azure Federation customer beta program has been announced. To Sign up go here

It’s important to note that T-SQL table partitioning is NOT supported in SQL Azure. There is also a free utility called Enzo SQL Shard (available here) that you can use for partitioning your data source.

You’ll want to take note of some other differences between SQL Server and SQL Azure regarding data loading and data access. Added recently is the ability to copy a SQL Azure database via the Database copy command. The syntax for a cross-server copy is as follows:

CREATE DATABASE DB2A AS COPY OF Server1.DB1A

The T-SQL INSERT statement IS supported (with the exceptions of updating with views or providing a locking hint inside of an INSERT statement). Related further to data migration is that T-SQL DROP DATABASE and other DDL commands have additional limits when executed against a SQL Azure installation. Also the T-SQL RESTORE and ATTACH DATABASE commands are not supported. Finally, the T-SQL statement EXECUTE AS (login) is not supported.

If you are migrating from a data source other than SQL Server, there are also some free tools and wizards available to make the job easier. Specifically there is an Access to SQL Azure Migration wizard and a MySQL to SQL Azure Migration wizard. Both work similarly to the SQL Azure Migration wizard in that they allow you to map the source schema to a destination schema, then create the appropriate DDL, then they allow you to configure and to execute the data transfer via bcp. A screen from the MySQL to SQL Azure Migration wizard is shown in Figure 10 below.

Here are links for some of these tools:

1) Access to SQL Azure Migration Wizard – here

2) MySQL to SQL Azure Migration Wizard – here

3) Oracle to SQL Server Migration Wizard (you will have to manually set the target version to ‘SQL Azure’ for appropriate DDL script generation) – here

Figure 10 Migration from MySQL to SQL Azure wizard screen

For even more information about migration, you may want to listen in to a recently recorded a 90 minute webcast with more details (and demos!) for Migration scenarios to SQL Azure - listen in here. Joining me on this webcast is the creator of the open-source SQL Azure Migration Wizard – George Huey. I also posted a version of this presentation (both slides and screencast) on my blog – here.

Data Access and Programmability

Now let’s take a look at common programming concerns when working with cloud data.

First you’ll want to consider where to set up your development environment. If you are an MSDN subscriber and can work with a database under 1 GB, then it may well make sense to develop using only a cloud installation (sandbox). In this way there will be no issue with migration from local to cloud. Using a regular (i.e. not MSDN subscriber) SQL Azure account you could develop directly against your cloud instance (most probably a using a cloud-located copy of your production database). Of course developing directly from the cloud is not practical for all situations.

If you choose to work with an on-premises SQL Server database as your development data source, then you must develop a mechanism for synchronizing your local installation with the cloud installation. You could do that using any of the methods discussed earlier, and tools like Data Sync Services and Sync Framework are being developed with this scenario in mind.

As long as you use only the supported features, the method for having your application switch from an on-premise SQL Server installation to a SQL Azure database is simple – you need only to change the connection string in your application.

Regardless of whether you set up your development installation locally or in the cloud, you’ll need to understand some programmability differences between SQL Server and SQL Azure. I’ve already covered the T-SQL and connection string differences. In addition all tables must have a clustered index at minimum (heap tables are not supported). As previously mentioned, the USE statement for changing databases isn’t supported. This also means that there is no support for distributed (cross-database) transactions or queries, and linked servers are not supported.

Other options not available when working with a SQL Azure database include:

- Full-text indexing
- CLR custom types (however the built-in Geometry and Geography CLR types are supported)
- RowGUIDs (use the uniqueidentifier type with the NEWID function instead)
- XML column indices
- Filestream datatype
- Sparse columns

Default collation is always used for the database. To make collation adjustments, set the column-level collation to the desired value using the T-SQL COLLATE statement. And finally, you cannot currently use SQL Profiler or the Database Tuning Wizard on your SQL Azure database.

Some important tools that you CAN use with SQL Azure for tuning and monitoring are the following:

- SSMS Query Optimizer to view estimated or actual query execution plan details and client statistics
- Select Dynamic Management views to monitor health and status
- Entity Framework to connect to SQL Azure after the initial model and mapping files have been created by connecting to a local copy of your SQL Azure database.

Depending of what type of application you are developing, you may be using SSAS, SSRS, SSIS or Power Pivot. You CAN also use any of these products as CONSUMERS of SQL Azure database data. Simply connect to your SQL Azure server and selected database using the methods already described in this article.

Another developer consideration is in understanding the behavior of transactions. As mentioned, only local (within the same database) transactions are supported. Also it is important to understand that the only transaction isolation level available for a database hosted on SQL Azure is READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT. Using this isolation level, readers get the latest consistent version of data that was available when the statement STARTED. SQL Azure does not detect update conflicts. This is also called an optimistic concurrency model, because lost updates, non-repeatable reads and phantoms can occur. Of course, dirty reads cannot occur.

Yet another method of accessing SQL Azure data programmatically is via OData. Currently in CTP and available here , you can try out exposing SQL Azure data via an OData interface by configuring this at the CTP portal. For a well-written introduction to OData, read here . Shown in Figure 11 below is one of the (CTP) configuration screens for exposing SQL Azure data as OData.

Figure 11 SQL OData (CTP) configuration

Database Administration

Generally when using SQL Azure, the administrator role becomes one of logical installation management. Physical management is handled by the platform. From a practical standpoint this means there are no physical servers to buy, install, patch, maintain or secure. There is no ability to physically place files, logs, tempdb and so on in specific physical locations. Because of this, there is no support for the T-SQL commands USE <database>, FILEGROUP, BACKUP, RESTORE or SNAPSHOT.

There is no support for the SQL Agent on SQL Azure. Also, there is no ability (or need) to configure replication, log shipping, database mirroring or clustering. If you need to maintain a local, synchronized copy of SQL Azure schemas and data, then you can use any of the tools discussed earlier for data migration and synchronization – they work both ways. You can also use the DATABASE COPY command. Other than keeping data synchronized, what are some other tasks that administrators may need to perform on a SQL Azure installation?

Most commonly, there will still be a need to perform logical administration. This includes tasks related to security and performance management. Of note is that in SQL Azure only there are two new database roles in the master database which are intended for security management. These roles are dbmanager (similar to SQL Server’s dbcreator role) and (similar to SQL Server’s securityadmin role) loginmanager. Also certain common usernames are not permitted. These include ‘sa’, ‘admin’, ‘administrator’, ‘root’ and ‘guest’. Finally passwords must meet complexity requirements. For more, read Kalen Delaney’s TechNET Article on SQL Azure security here .

Additionally, you may be involved in monitoring for capacity usage and associated costs. To help you with these tasks, SQL Azure provides a public Status History dashboard that shows current service status and recent history (an example of history is shown in Figure 12) here .

Figure 12 SQL Azure Status History

There is also a new set of error codes that both administrators and developers should be aware of when working with SQL Azure. These are shown in Figure 13 below. For a complete set of error codes for SQL Azure see this MSDN reference. Also, developers may want to take a look at this MSDN code sample on how to programmatically decode error messages.

Figure 13 SQL Azure error codes

SQL Azure provides a high security bar by default. It forces SSL encryption with all permitted (via firewall rules) client connections. Server-level logins and database-level users and roles are also secured. There are no server-level roles in SQL Azure. Encrypting the connection string is a best practice. Also, you may wish to use Windows Azure certificates for additional security. For more detail read here .

In the area of performance, SQL Azure includes features such as automatically killing long running transactions and idle connections (over 30 minutes). Although you cannot use SQL Profiler or trace flags for performance tuning, you can use SQL Query Optimizer to view query execution plans and client statistics. A sample query to SQL Azure with Query Optimizer output is shown in Figure 14 below. You can also perform statistics management and index tuning using the standard T-SQL methods.

Figure 15 SQL Azure query with execution plan output shown

There is a select list of dynamic management views (covering database, execution or transaction information) available for database administration as well. These include sys.dm_exec_connections , _requests , _sessions, _tran_database_transactions, _active_transactions, _partition_stats For a complete list of supported DMVs for SQL Azure see here .

There are also some new views such as sys.database_usage and sys.bandwidth_usage. These show the number, type and size of the databases and the bandwidth usage for each database so that administrators can understand SQL Azure billing. Also this blog post gives a sample of how you can use T-SQL to calculate estimated cost of service. Here is yet another MVP’s view of how to calculate billing based on using these views. A sample is shown in Figure 16. In this view, quantity is listed in KB. You can monitor space used via this command:

SELECT SUM(reserved_page_count) * 8192 FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats

Figure 16 Bandwidth Usage in SQL Query

Further around SQL Azure performance monitoring, Microsoft has released an installable tool which will help you to better understand performance. It produces reports on ‘longest running queries’, ‘max CPU usage’ and ‘max IO usage’. Shown in Figure 17 below is a sample report screen for the first metric. You can download this tool from this location

Figure 17 Top 10 CPU consuming queries for a SQL Azure workload

You can also access the current charges for the SQL Azure installation via the SQL Azure portal by clicking on the Billing link at the top-right corner of the screen. Below in Figure 18 is an example of a bill for SQL Azure.

Figure 18 Sample Bill for SQL Azure services

Learn More and Roadmap

Product updates announced at TechEd US / May 2011 are as follows:

SQL Azure Management REST API – a web API for managing SQL Azure servers.
Multiple servers per subscription – create multiple SQL Azure servers per subscription.
JDBC Driver – updated database driver for Java applications to access SQL Server and SQL Azure.
DAC Framework 1.1 – making it easier to deploy databases and in-place upgrades on SQL Azure.

For deeper technical details you can read more in the MSDN documentation here .

Microsoft has also announced that is it is working to implement database backup and restore, including point-in-time restore for SQL Azure databases. This is a much-requested feature for DBAs and Microsoft has said that they are prioritizing the implementation of this feature set due to demand.

To learn more about SQL Azure, I suggest you download the Windows Azure Training Kit. This includes SQL Azure hands-on learning, whitepapers, videos and more. The training kit is available here. There is also a project on Codeplex which includes downloadable code, sample videos and more here . Also you will want to read the SQL Azure Team Blog here, and check out the MSDN SQL Azure Developer Center here .

If you want to continue to preview upcoming features for SQL Azure, then you’ll want to visit SQL Azure Labs here. Show below in Figure 19, is a list our current CTP programs. As of this writing, those programs include – OData, Data Sync and Import/Export. SQL Azure Federations has been announced, but is not open to invited customers.

Figure 19 SQL Azure CTP programs

A final area you may want to check out is the Windows Azure Data Market. This is a place for you to make data sets that you choose to host on SQL Azure publically available. This can be at no cost or for a fee. Access is via Windows Live ID. You can connect via existing clients, such as the latest version of the Power Pivot add-in for Excel, or programmatically. In any case, this is a place for you to ‘advertise’ (and sell) access to data you’ve chosen to host on SQL Azure.

Conclusion

Are you still reading? Wow! You must be really interested in SQL Azure. Are you using it? What has your experience been? Are you interested, but NOT using it yet? Why not? Are you using some other type of cloud-data storage (relational or non-relational)? What is it, how do you like it? I welcome your feedback.

Happy coding!

FREE Developer Azure Training in SoCal

lynnlangit — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:06:16 GMT

Los Angeles – June 2^nd - http://bit.ly/ABCLA

Irvine – June 6^th - http://bit.ly/ABCirvine

San Diego – June 7^th - http://bit.ly/ABCSD

Also for WindowsPhone7 – June 4th

Santa Monica - http://www.xapfest.com/

Also get your FREE Windows Azure Trial Account

Go here - http://windowsazurepass.com/- use code - DPEWR02

SharePoint 2010–keynote deck from Connections San Diego–May 2011

lynnlangit — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:46:53 GMT

Here’s the deck from my talk today – enjoy!

SharePoint 2010 Connections

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Teaching Kids Programming–Jan-April 2011 UPDATE

lynnlangit — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:38:21 GMT

What have we been up to this year? Take a look at the slide deck below. This also includes ‘stuff we need’ and future directions. I welcome your comments

Teaching Kids Programming Jan-April 2011 Update

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Why We Must Teach Girls to Program–A Women Developer Speaks

lynnlangit — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:17:28 GMT

I got this story on my blog in response to a presentation I did (on .NET Rocks) about TKP and thought you might enjoy reading it. Details have been obscured on request.

“I heard your Podcast about Teaching Kids to Program and it was really inspiring, especially the new course work you are developing. I was impressed by Small Basic as a teaching tool. I am a developer <at a major corporation> and work as a corporate web application developer/dba. I do not teach for the very reason stated - I cannot afford to!

I won't be able to volunteer to teach locally for awhile as I am trying to start an online media company (while working a ft corporate job). However, I think the work you are doing is very important and am very happy to see Microsoft support it. We definitely need to have programming taught well in public schools and I know they still don't do this.

I myself learned to program at 8 y.o when my father bought my sister and I a Commodore-64. I learned on my own in a similar fashion as your courses because I had Turtle Logo and a sprite maker and remember to this day the sheer joy of those first programs. Sadly, when I got to 7th grade, I was quickly labeled a nerd and ostracized by the other girls because I was a computer whiz (we did live in a rural area). I remember completely dropping all interest in programming when my girlfriends made fun of me - even though my parents were educators that encouraged me.

Once I got to high school, I was strongly encouraged to take advanced math and science classes, but the 1 programming class was full of boys and very intimidating. I took it and other girls continued to actively ostracized me. I eventually went to <major US university> and although I see now I had talent, majored in <Liberal Arts topic> instead of Computer Science or Symbolic systems because I was convinced computer programmers were geeks and uncool.

It was 1994 when I graduated, however, and a combination of economic reality, the exciting development on <products of that time> and the encouragement of important men in my life led me to begin developing a career as an IT developer. I have now been an IT developer for 15 years and love programming and learning and implementing new technology!

I send you this story because I think it points out the importance of the programming classes you are teaching to girls. Even though I had family support and educational support, I really did not pursue becoming a programmer until after college because of all the negative peer pressure from other girls.

I think that good quality programming classes for girls help to both teach programming concepts and to break stereotypes of programmers. It also helps programming become a mainstream educational topic instead of just being a topic for geeks. I will also note that I am the only female Caucasian on my development team at work. We have many IT women educated in India and plenty of men of every ethnicity, but no American educated women. Hopefully that will change! Keep up the good work! It is very needed! I hope to do my part in the years to come.”

New Series–Developer Tools for Azure

lynnlangit — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 03:54:25 GMT

Screencast series – Part One – Web Portal for Windows Azure

Enjoy!

Migration to SQL Azure–Screencast

lynnlangit — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:55:18 GMT

Here are the slides and the webcast (broken into 15 minute chunks) – enjoy!
This presentation includes demos using the following tools:

1) SQL Azure Migration Wizard
2) Access to SQL Azure Migration Wizard
3) SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 – scripting, DACPAC
4) Business Intelligence Development Studio – SSIS
5) Visual Studio 2010 – DACPAC

Migrating to SQL Azure

View more presentations from Lynn Langit.

Here is the screencast around 60 minutes total (5 parts – around 15 minutes each) on You Tube

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

To get started with Windows Azure (including SQL Azure) for FREE for 30 days, go to http://windowsazurepass.com/ and use signup code DPEWR02.

The Women in Tech Lunch at Mix11 generates action

lynnlangit — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:25:31 GMT

The first-ever LEGO Serious Play event at the WiT Mix11 luncheon hosted around 100 attendees, both women and men. I co-led the event with LEGO superstar, Thomas Mueller (shown below leading a LEGO Mindstorms event at the Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo, CA).

Thomas graciously lent us over 8,000 bricks from his personal collection for this event. Participants were invited to build models using LEGO bricks to reflect their answers to the statements listed below about the problem of too few women in technology. We used LEGO bricks to stimulate creativity, add fun and increase communication! Thomas and I showed example models that we had built in advance to get the attendees started thinking. For example, for the first question, Thomas built a model which reflected one of his considerations about having too few women in technology. This model, shown below, represents the idea that technology is boring and implied the need for us working in technology to help to change that false perception.

We gave the groups a short time to build, 5 minutes and then asked table leads to get feedback from each participant on his or her model in the next 5 minutes. We had 3 build events around the statements listed below. The goal of this event was to get each participant thinking deeply about the WiT problem and his/her own personal connection so that he or she would commit to doing at least one micro-action within the next 30 days.

1) Describe one aspect of the problem (i.e. too few women in technology)
2) Describe why you are here (i.e. what is motivating you to work on this problem)
3) Describe one area of the solution, as you see it and one action that you can take within the next 30 days to work on this aspect of the problem).

Everyone was eager to build, so they opened the containers and bags of bricks on the tables (shown below) and got started…

It was fantastic to see what people built and even more, to walk around to listen to the conversation. Everyone got into the spirit immediately. Most people seemed proud of their models (shown below) and eager to share…

I loved seeing the creativity and ideas flowing. Here are some of the models…

Another great aspect of this event was the large number of men that chose to participate (around 25%). The guys shown below were having a great time building and sharing…

If you’d like to run your own version of this event, ping me via this blog and we’ll let you know how we set up the LEGO brick bags. In particular, we included a large number of LEGO people. Participants used those pieces very frequently in their models, as shown below…

Special thanks to volunteer Thomas Mueller for making this event happen. He selected the brick types, packed most of the bags himself (over 100 of them!), hand-carried them back and forth to Las Vegas and was his usual great and hugely helpful self. Thomas has been volunteering for YEARS with me at kid’s events. Despite being very busy at his ‘day job’, as a SQL Server DBA, he always makes time for educating people with LEGO bricks. At the end of the event I finally got him to sit down and eat lunch (of course he was the last one!), shown below…

Participants did have fun, while sharing great conversations, while building their particular LEGO models and deciding on micro-actions. Many 'tweeted' out their actions using the #WiT and #Mix11 tags. Below is part of the tweetstream:

--I commit to : spend time telling my younger sister about mix by Elenaa Salaks #WiT Lego build #mix11 http://twitpic.com/4kwhti

--I commit to : encourage designers to be more technical by @christurvey #WiT Lego build #mix11 http://twitpic.com/4kw9m3

--I commit to : get 5 women to apply for jobs at our department by @onnij & Gunnar Hoffman #WiT Lego build #mix11 http://twitpic.com/4kw7bw

--RT @DanweiTran Attended #WiT at #MIX11 and promised I will show my cousin how to make a #wp7 app http://twitpic.com/4kw5y7

--I commit to : write a blog so I can be a lighthouse about WiT by @davidhernie #WiT Lego build #mix11 http://twitpic.com/4kw1n4

--I commit to : write a blog about WiT by @tdelplace #WiT Lego build #mix11 http://twitpic.com/4kvzmd

--I commit to : install a CMS system for a tech girl by @joeldart #WiT Lego build #mix11 http://twitpic.com/4kvwvb

--Lots of people volunteering to get involved. Im gonna get with my daughters' girl scout troop and get them coding ^dr #WIT #MIX11

--Inspired to teach programming to middle schoolers at #WIT at #MIX11, especially as a side trade for girls looking to be full-time mothers.

--http://twitpic.com/4khqjr In the next 30 days I will use my blog to write a positive post to motivate & inspire women. #mix11 #wit #wt

--After attending #WiT my micro action will be to discuss with my 13yo niece how we can show cool technology to girls in her class #mix11

--Attended #WiT at #MIX11 and promised I will show my cousin how to make a #wp7 app

--#mix11 #wit take Lipsticks & Laptops outreach to a larger platform to spread the message encouraging girls in science & technology

--Tell your students, friends and family about dreamspark.com #WIT #MIX11

--I will take a lead. I am speaking on Facebook dev in a month. I will personally invite 3 women to attend. #wit #mix11

--I will create a blog that girls can say why they can do anything they want. Requested for #wit #mix11

--Need to volunteer with young girls to teach them about technology before it is too late #mix11 #WiT

--Building prototypes with latest technology to encourage women to play more with technology #WiT #Mix11

--I ll write an article about Women in Technology #mix11 #wit

--I'm going to bring in technology to my school of religion class so that the students can understand techology and not be afraid #WiT #MIX11

--I will push a designer into programming this fall... #wit #mix11

--I plan to work with my 7 year old daughter to get her back on TKP and make a new recipe of her design #WiT #MIX11

--I'll ask a woman to help on an open source #WP7 app. #WiT #MIX11

--I will share reosources related to #WIT through my blog by May 13th #WIT #MIX11

--I will do a LEGO Mindstorms workshop at DigiGirlz in Irvine, CA. #mix11 #wit #tkp

--I will write a new recipe for #TKP using Mad Libs by May 13 #WiT #Mix11

Thanks also to the following 'Table Leads' for helping to make the event a success! Thanks as well to Mix11 event lead Jennifer Ritzinger for the invite to host this event.

David Robinson -- Microsoft - SQL Azure PG / Redmond, WA, USA
Jason Ward -- Microsoft - Visual Studio PG / Redmond, WA, USA
Layla Driscoll -- Microsoft - . NET CLR PG / Redmond, WA, USA
Laura Neumann Wyant -- Microsoft - Developer Evangelist / New York City, NY, USA
Guadalupe Casuso -- Microsoft - Architect Evangelist / Argentina
Katrien De Graeve -- Microsoft - Developer Evangelist / Belgium
Olga Londer -- Microsoft - Developer Marketing / UK
William Bartholomew -- Microsoft - Visual Studio PG / Redmond, WA, USA
Tom Lindeman -- Microsoft - Patterns & Practices / Redmond, WA, USA
Gina Johnston -- New Horizons - Adobe Instructor / Anaheim, CA, USA
Llewellyn Falco -- Spun Labs – Developer / Irvine, CA, USA
Raj Das -- Microsoft – Services / Chicago, IL, USA

TKP at Desert Code Camp

lynnlangit — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:59:19 GMT

AND

This weekend we took 8 Local Developer volunteers (most pictured below) from So Cal to Desert Code Camp in Phoenix, Az. We taught 7 hours of hands–on content designed to introduce children (ages 5-17) to programming. This is the TKP’s most extensive effort to date at a CodeCamp. Our courseware is found at www.teachingkidsprogramming.org. It was a fun and productive trip – we rented a van and stayed at Llew’s parent’s house, so there was a lot of ‘geek bonding’ going on! Thanks to Microsoft for paying for the van and groceries for our volunteers. We also got to see cactus in bloom (shown below).

Even though we stopped on the way over to see the blooms, we were in town to teach the kids at CodeCamp. Shown below is Dustin Hotard, SoCal developer volunteer teacher supporting the Kodu class. Note that we pair program all of the students (and teachers) as part of the TKP teaching method. We rotate which kid is typing every 5 minutes. Pairing ‘evens’ out skill level differences – especially important at events where the kid’s ages vary widely (unlike classroom teaching). Also pair learning is more social and fun.

Parterning with CodeCamp

Desert CodeCamp lead Joe Guadagno had run a single kid’s track at previous code camps. This CodeCamp had THREE classrooms (and tracks) dedicated to teaching kids technology. Our team staffed 1 of them. To my knowledge this is the largest implementation of kid-focused activities at any CodeCamp in the United States. I have attended many CodeCamps over the years, and was thrilled to see the number of families in attendance all day long.

In addition to learning, there was the socializing, bonding, geeking and eating. Of course, geeks LOVE pizza! Shown below is volunteer, Woody Pewitt, staffing the pizza (lunch) effort in the center court area. Many people I talked to said they were MORE inclined to attend CodeCamp BECAUSE they could include their kids. Joe also said that having tracks for kids was great not only for the kids, but also because the parents could share in the learning with their own kids. It was fantastic to see kid’s showing their parents what they had learned in our classes during lunchtime.

TKP Courseware

After syncing up on Friday and reviewing (and debating!) what and how we should teach (shown above), we were ready to go. As mentioned, at this codecamp our team taught seven 1-hour units. Specifically, we taught 3 progressive hours of Microsoft SmallBasic recipes for kids ages 10+. We taught the SQUARE, HOUSES and HILOW recipes. Kids were introduced to the following concepts in these three hours:

Objects, methods, arguments
Working in an IDE, i.e. intellisense, keywords, compile-time error resolution
For loops
Subroutines
Variables
If statements
Refactoring

We also taught 2 hours of Microsoft Kodu, a visual programming language, for kids ages 5 and up. Volunteer instructor, Gina Johnston, wrote this course for Desert Code Camp. I published her course on Slideshare – here. In this workshop kids learned to

Use Kodu – play a game
Create a world from scratch, i.e. add land, characters
Program objects using the visual WHEN/DO editor
Set (world) properties using the visual editor
Save/Export games

Additionally, we taught a 1 hour introduction to T-SQL queries using SqlAzure. This is a new version of our core T-SQL course. In this course the kids used the SQL Azure web query too to

Translate English statements into T-SQL queries
Use the editor to write, debug and run T-SQL queries
Use the SELECT, FROM, WHERE keywords
Write progressively more complete WHERE clauses, i.e. using numbers, strings, AND/OR keywords and more

Finally, our volunteer group also supported a 3-hour Lego Mindstorms workshop. Our volunteer (shown below), Thomas Mueller, came appropriately attired in his LEGO shirt and LEGO name badge.

What we Learned

Families are fun. Having a family-focused CodeCamp is a wonderful opportunity to have children understand just what it is that their parents actually do. We actually had one dad video record his kid so he could capture the event of his son learning to program for the first time (using Kodu – shown below). It was common for kids in our classes to have their parents take photos of their work.

CodeCamps are great places for kids – lots of kids. Nearly every kid’s class was full or overflowing. This is no way took away from all of the normal (adult) learning and sharing that happens at a typical code camp. As mentioned, I heard several parents comment that they were ‘really glad’ that their kids were not only welcome, but also, had multiple places to learn while their parents were learning too. One of the reasons I am writing this blog post is to encourage ALL CodeCamps to include kid’s programming tracks.

Hosting a full day of kid’s content is hard work, but it’s a great way to ‘kick off’ a volunteer effort in a new city. We met several, new local developers that were excited by seeing what their kids were learning, and, most importantly, who wanted to start volunteering themselves, so that those kids can to continue to learn after the CodeCamp. I shared our lessons learned and best practices about volunteering in local schools, running after school programs, training school teachers, etc…I believe that this effect alone makes the long drive in the bumpy van back and forth to PHX for all of us worth it. It goes without saying that there is also little that is as satisfying as hosting kid’s first programming experience. Look at the two boy’s faces (below) as they work on ‘getting the robot to do what we want it to.’

How you can run a kids track at your CodeCamp

The key to a doing this is to share the work. It might seem obvious, but the difference between a happy successful “can’t wait till the next” code camp and a exhausted overworked “this is the last time” code camp is having the appropriate number of people. Speaking broadly you first need people who take care of logistics. Logistics include: Demand generation, registration, venue procurement, machine setup (software installs), food & snacks, signed releases for kids, event schedule. The most important aspect of logistics is getting the kids there. Joe did a fantastic job with every aspect of logistics and made it a pleasure for our team to ‘show up and teach.’

The other area is content. For this you need age appropriate software, courseware and teaching methods. The key here is experienced teachers. This doesn’t necessarily mean school teachers, but it does mean people with some experience teaching children, and preferably, that experience includes teaching children technology. From a practical stand point, we find that a class of 20-30 children is best taught with 2 Teachers and 1 or 2 support people we call Proctors. The helping hands of the proctors, shown below during the Mindstorms workshop, are key to helping kids to feel successful while learning.

So, you might be thinking (because all my readers can do math!) 7 hours of class * 4 Teachers per class = 28 Hours of Teaching. That’s a lot of teachers and teacher-hours! And you’d be right. Remember what I said in the beginning about getting enough people? It’s key. Teaching introductory programming at an event (rather than at school, where kids ‘expect to learn’) to full classrooms of varying age kids requires LOTS of focus and energy—but, with the right mix and quantity of volunteers, it can be done. The good news is there are LOTS of programmers (potential volunteer teachers!) already at a CodeCamp. We suggest having teachers teach only one or two classes in the track, so that they don’t burn out and so that they can still enjoy other parts of CodeCamp. If you do so, then they’ll still be smiling at the end of teaching their kid’s class (as Llewellyn is, shown below teaching the HiLow SmallBasic recipe).

What about courseware? You could write your own, and you may want to, but maybe not. Llewellyn & I have a good bit of experience with writing (and teaching) courseware, and we would suggest that you use previously tested courseware (such as ours or someone else's), so you can focus all your energy on teaching. To that end we are recording ‘train the trainer’ videos and writing best practices for you on our website. If you choose to write courseware, we share that for each hour of classroom courseware, we spend about 20-30 hours envisioning, writing, testing, etc…

Another aspect is keep the classroom setup as simple as is possible. To that end, we’ve figured out to run SmallBasic (and our extensions) from USB sticks – so zero install on Windows 7 machine. Also we tried out running the T-SQL class from the cloud. We installed the SQL sample database on SQL Azure and used the SQL Azure web (Silverlight) web client as the student query tool (shown below)– another zero install!

We are also adding a list of teachers in various geographies that have already taught our courseware on our TKP site. Feel free to reach out to these teacher volunteers as resources as well. To get started teaching yourself, we suggest that you first read the teaching notes, watch the videos and then try teaching one kid the 1st recipe. After that if you’d like we are happy to provide teaching training “phone support”. If you do run a kid’s track at your CodeCamp (or other type of geek community event) we’d love to hear about it. Drop me a note via this blog, let me know what went ‘right’ and what you’d like to do better.

Let’s work together and teach the next generation of programmers!

Cloud Opportunities near you–Growth of Cloud Computing

lynnlangit — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:44:57 GMT

If you live in the west coast in April you must note these cities

MSDN Presents…

Rob Bagby and Bruno Terkaly in a city near you

Cloud Development is one of the fastest growing trends in our industry. Don’t get left behind.

In this event, Rob Bagby and Bruno Terkaly will provide an overview of developing with Windows Azure. They will cover both where and why you should consider taking advantage of the various Windows Azure’s services in your application, as well as providing you with a great head start on how to accomplish it. This half-day event will be split up into 3 sections. The first section will cover the benefits and nuances of hosting web applications and services in Windows Azure, as well as taking advantage of SQL Azure. The second section will cover the ins and outs of Windows Azure storage, while the third will illustrate the Windows Azure AppFabric.

The fact is that cloud computing offers affordable innovation. At most corporations, IT spending is growing at unsustainable rates. This is making innovation very difficult.

Companies, scientists, and innovators are turning to the cloud. Don’t get left behind.

4/11/2011
Denver
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480157&Culture=en-US

4/12/2011
San Francisco
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480158&Culture=en-US

4/15/2011
Tempe
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480159&Culture=en-US

4/18/2011
Bellevue
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480160&Culture=en-US

4/19/2011
Portland
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480161&Culture=en-US

4/20/2011
Irvine
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480162&Culture=en-US

4/21/2011
Los Angeles
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480163&Culture=en-US

Why you should go - Cloud computing facts

The cloud makes it possible for new levels of computing power:
(1) 10's of thousands of cores
(2) 100's of terabytes of data
(3) 100,000's of daily jobs
(4) incredible efficiencies with typical levels of 80%-90% cpu utilization

Statistics

Huge Market Growth - Cloud Computing
$149 Billion projected market by 2014

Number of Servers on Earth
60 million

Virtualization
70% of work done will be on virtualized servers by 2014

Amount of Power in a MegaData Centers
50 megawatts (25 - 50 times the dotcom era)

Estimated market for servers in cloud in 2014
$6.4 Billion (2010 it was $3.8 Billion)

Bloomberg Businessweek (3/7/2011, p52)