Demystifying The Code

The Bagby Family is Moving to London

We are moving in December.  Read the full post on my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

Rob Bagby’s Blog has Moved to www.RobBagby.com

I have moved my blog from http://blogs.msdn.com/bags to www.robbagby.com.  For the short term, I will be publishing summaries of my posts on blogs.msdn.com, with a link pointing to the full post on www.robbagby.com.  If you are subscribing to my blog, please subscribe to this rss. 

Thanks!

Taking My Medicine

The post Taking My Medicine has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

MSDN Events in September

As you may already know, we in the West Region have been working hard preparing for the next round of MSDN Events.  Personally, I have put together a great session on building professional business applications with Silverlight 3.  My goal with this session was to illustrate the use and value of various design patterns when building Silverlight LOB applications.  The patterns we will discuss are:

• MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) – Allows for a separation of concerns in a Silverlight application and promotes testability
• Repository – Abstracts away the back end data source (database in most cases) and promotes testability
• Pipeline – promotes readability, extensibility and maintainability of code
• Service Agent – Abstracts away complexity of services.  Can hide things like asynchronous calls, protocol-specifics like HTTP or SOAP details, etc.

Another cool thing about the session is that we start off designing the application with SketchFlow.  If you haven’t seen this great addition to Expression Blend, come check it out.  It allows you build interactive prototypes in short order.  Also, just for fun, we throw in some gratuitous animations in the Silverlight app as we go along.  This session will be about 1.5 hours.  The next 2 sessions will discuss the developer-focused features of IE8 and Windows 7.

The abstracts for all 3 sessions are as follows:

Windows 7 for Developers

Windows 7 is almost here! With it are numerous improvements and new features to take advantage of in your applications. Watch and learn as we demonstrate how to utilize the new taskbar, multi-touch support, search, libraries, and more.

IE8 for Developers

IE8 makes your web better… faster, safer and easier.  This is true for developers too.  In this session, we will illustrate how developers can take advantage of some new technologies in IE8 such as accelerators to enhance a user’s web experience.  We will also illustrate the built-in developer tools in IE8 and how to take advantage of them.  These tools include a powerful CSS tool, script debugging and a script profiler.

Building Business Applications with Silverlight 3

Silverlight 3 has launched.  In this session, we will illustrate how you can build powerful line of business (LOB) applications with Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3.  We will begin with illustrating how you can build powerful prototypes with SketchFlow in Blend 3.  We will then implement a LOB application, illustrating some design patterns such as the Repository and Model View ViewModel (MVVM) along the way.

Here are the registration links (including Boulder)

I plan on delivering these events in Salt Lake City and Phoenix in October or November.

Hope to see you there…

Working with Azure Table Storage from PHP

The post Working with Azure Table Storage from PHP has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

Hosting a PHP Application in Windows Azure

The post on illustrating how to host a PHP application in Windows Azure has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

Michael Jackson Memorial being broadcasted using Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming

Today, July 7th, at 10AM PT, 1PM ET, we are broadcasting the Michael Jackson memorial, live in HD from the Staples Center in Los Angeles using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight to the world.  Please visit: http://inmusic.ca/news_and_features/Michael_Jackson to find the embedded player experience.

PHP and IIS: Running PHP under Fast CGI and Url Rewriting

The post Running PHP in IIS7 under FastCGI and URL Rewriting has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

Best of MIX Phoenix – Tim Heuer and Dan Wahlin speaking

I am psyched to announce that Tim Heuer (Community Program Manager for Silverlight) and Dan Wahlin (MVP, Consultant and Author) will be joining me to present at the “Best of MIX” MSDN Unleashed event in Phoenix on May 18th.  Details for the event are below.  Please make sure you register for the event.

What’s New in Silverlight 3?

Are you interested in building business-focused Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)?  Would you like to take advantage of 3D in the browser, but assume it is too hard?  Have you wanted to take a Silverlight application offline?  Then this session is for you.  We will explore and illustrate the new features of Silverlight 3, including the following:

· Support for perspective 3D

· Offline Support

· .NET RIA Services which simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure

This session will begin with a brief overview of Azure and discuss some of the announcements made at MIX.  We will then illustrate through demo how to build a Windows Azure application from the ground up.  We will illustrate how to consume Azure Table Storage, how to host services, web pages and Silverlight components, as well as how to deploy your solution to the cloud.

MVC 1.0 vs ASP.Net Webforms

Have you heard about the new ASP.NET MVC  framework from Microsoft and wondered what it was all about? Are you curious whether this replaces ASP.Net WebForms?  Well in this session you will learn how to use the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern to take advantage of your favorite .NET Framework language for writing business logic in a way that is de-coupled from the views of the data.  In addition, we will talk about the pros and cons of both MVC and Web Forms, how to determine the best choice for a specific project, various techniques and patterns used to build MVC applications vs. Web Forms applications, and the implications for using each approach.

Hope to see you there!

Azure Application Part 3: Expose (REST) Web Service And Consume in Silverlight

The post Expose REST Web Services in Azure and consuming in Silverlight has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

MSDN Events Presents: The Best Of MIX

We have finalized the content and most of the dates for “The Best of MIX” events.  We will be bringing 3 great sessions to you, including “What’s New in Silverlight 3?”, “Building Web Applications with Windows Azure” and “MVC 1.0 vs ASP.Net Webforms”.  We have been working hard to bring you a fresh view of these topics, so please be sure to register, as these events tend to fill up fast.  You will find registration links, as well as a summary of the topics below.  I hope to see you there.

Registration Links

• Albuquerque, NM - May 4, 1:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.
• Salt Lake City, UT - May 6, 8:00 A.M. - 12:00 noon or May 6, 1:00 p.M. - 5:00 P.M.
• Colorado Springs, CO - May 28, 1:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.
• Denver, CO - May 26, 1:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M. or May 27, 8:00 A.M. - 12:00 noon
• Ft. Collins, CO - (date and registration tba)
• Phoenix, AZ - May 18, 2009 1:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.

Summary

What’s New in Silverlight 3?

Are you interested in building business-focused Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)?  Would you like to take advantage of 3D in the browser, but assume it is too hard?  Have you wanted to take a Silverlight application offline?  Then this session is for you.  We will explore and illustrate the new features of Silverlight 3, including the following:

· Support for perspective 3D

· Offline Support

· .NET RIA Services which simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure

This session will begin with a brief overview of Azure and discuss some of the announcements made at MIX.  We will then illustrate through demo how to build a Windows Azure application from the ground up.  We will illustrate how to consume Azure Table Storage, how to host services, web pages and Silverlight components, as well as how to deploy your solution to the cloud.

MVC 1.0 vs ASP.Net Webforms

Have you heard about the new ASP.NET MVC  framework from Microsoft and wondered what it was all about? Are you curious whether this replaces ASP.Net WebForms?  Well in this session you will learn how to use the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern to take advantage of your favorite .NET Framework language for writing business logic in a way that is de-coupled from the views of the data.  In addition, we will talk about the pros and cons of both MVC and Web Forms, how to determine the best choice for a specific project, various techniques and patterns used to build MVC applications vs. Web Forms applications, and the implications for using each approach.

Azure Application Part 2: Access Azure Table Storage

The post on Azure Table Storage has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

Screencast Published - Building an Azure App Part I: Setup and Hello World

I have released the 1st screencast of a multi-part series where I will be building an Azure application from the ground up.  The application will be a shopping cart application with a Silverlight Front End.  The goal of this application is to illustrate various features of Windows Azure and in coming weeks, portions of .NET Services.  The first few posts will concentrate on Windows Azure, our Cloud Operating System.  I will illustrate things like the developer fabric, hosting various pieces of an application in the cloud (web pages, services, Silverlight components), as well as working with Azure Table Storage.  From there, we will keep going, adding and updating pieces of the application.
In this screencast (Part I), I will illustrate how to get your development environment, as well as a Windows Azure Hosted Services Project set up.  He will then build a simple "Hello, World" application, run and debug it locally and finally deploy it to the cloud. 
You can also read my Blog Post for great documentation on how to get your environment set up!

Azure Application Part 1: Setup and running “Hello World”

The post Setting up and running Hello World in Azure has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.

Building An Azure Application From The Ground Up

The post for the index of Building an Azure Application from the ground up has been moved to my new blog at www.robbagby.com.