BenkoBLOG : MSDN Events

MSDN Unleashed Code is Posted!

benko — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:02:59 GMT

I’ve uploaded the code from this quarter’s MSDN events to http://www.benkotips.com/code. If you’re interested here’s the links from this quarter’s session on IE8 …

MSDN: Subscribing to content with Web Slices
Official IE team blog blogs.msdn.com/ie
IE developer center msdn.Com /ie
IE compatibility center msdn.Com /iecompat
MIX09 sessions.visitmix.com
Giorgio Sardo’s blog blogs.msdn.com/Giorgio

…and Win7 for Developers…

Windows 7 Engineering Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/e7
Windows 7 for Developers Blog http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/developers/default.aspx
MSDN Windows Developer Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/windows
Channel 9 http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Windows+7
Windows 7 Taskbar: Developer Resources http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Windows7Taskbar
Windows Ribbon Framework: Developer Resources http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ScenicRibbon

Get Started with Mobile Dev

benko — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:08:47 GMT

We're delivering some sessions this quarter on how to build applications with Windows Mobile 6 and I wanted to provide some links to help you get started. Although I will be doing my development with Visual Studio 2008 you can also use VS 2005 with the Mobile 5 SDK as well. To build a development environment here are some links:

Try Visual Studio 2008 Professional (download a 90 Day trial copy here...)
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 with .NET 3.5 sp1
Windows Mobile 6 Refresh SDK
Mobile 6.1.4 Emulator Images
Virtual Hands On Labs for Mobile

Some related links with additional resources include

Developer.WindowsMobile.com
Windows Mobile Team Blog
Windows Mobile Developers Wiki
Windows Mobile Developer Center
MyMobiler - Share your Mobile Screen on your PC
Visual Studio Magazine article on Mobile Deployment
Andy Wigley does Sync Framework

By the way, look for some QuickTip Screencasts coming soon to help you get started. Stay Tuned!

SQL 2008 Templates...a little more info

benko — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:59:39 GMT

Last week in Kansas City while presenting the New Features of SQL 2008 for Developers session of MSDN Unleashed we had some questions of whether this is a new feature in this release. I mentioned that it isn't and has been part of the product since at least SQL 2005, and someone asked whether the keyboard shortcut for filling out the parameters of the template (CTRL+SHIFT+M) still worked. I didn't know about this feature so I tried it in front of a live audience and found it doesn't work out of the box.

My hat goes off to an attendee who took the time to figure out why not and he sent me the answer. The bottom line is that the keyboard mappings are different in SQL 2008. You can fix this by going into the Tools|Options|Keyboard settings and set the keyboard mapping. I found that once I opened the settings window that the keyboard shortcut worked whether in Standard or SQL 2000 layout. It's weird that I had to open the settings to get the shortcuts to work, but it did.

For what it's worth, hopefully you'll be able to use the Templates feature when you're working with SQL Code.

MSDN Developer Conference is Coming!

benko — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:09:53 GMT

If you missed PDC, you're in luck. We're bringing the best of PDC to a city near you. You can check it out - the site is up, the agenda is listed, and registration is live (register with RSVP code MDCEXTB)!

MSDN Events comes to Des Moines & Kansas City

benko — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:59:59 GMT

We're back on the road this week with more MSDN Event goodness. Tuesday is Des Moines where my good friend from Florida (Russ Fustino) will be bringing the Tool Shed to the greater midwest, and then Thursday I'll be delivering the sessions in Kansas City. The topics we're covering this week include:

Take a closer look at Microsoft's latest tools and technologies to help you create more compelling applications. Discover how Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) helps you develop compelling user interfaces that really stand out. Learn about the advancements in Vista that will make your applications more secure than ever. And see the features introduced in Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 designed to target Windows, Office, and the Web. Register today for these free, live sessions.

Find out more at http://www.msdnevents.com

Hope you can make it!

Mike

MSDN Summer Event Links

benko — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:24:41 GMT

As promised yesterday at the St. Louis MSDN Event in Clayton, here are the links to the additional information in the slide deck. I've also posted the code from the WPF Bonanza project we built onto www.BenkoTIPS.com/code so you can take a look for yourself at what we did. The slide decks will be available on www.msdnevents.com/resources.

WPF Demystified Links

Vista Security Links

.NET 3.5 sp1 and Visual Studio 2008 sp1

On the road with MSDN Events

benko — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:24:50 GMT

We're back on the trail with Microsoft Across America and more developer "What's Possible". This time we're talking about WPF, Vista and What's New with Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You can read more about the abstracts for the sessions at http://msdnevents.com but I wanted to list the registration links for the events so you can go directly there and confirm your registration. Now I'm not necessarily presenting all of them, but I wanted to make sure you knew they are going on so you can catch them live. The list includes:

Join us for some developer fun...See you on the road!

Where can I register for MSDN Events?

benko — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:01:40 GMT

Until we get the www.MSDNEvents.com site up to date you can search for and register on the site https://msevents.microsoft.com by clicking the advanced search box and selecting your city. I found that I needed to turn off all but the "In Person" event type check boxes, otherwise you also get all the webcasts that are available.

See you at MSDN Events!

Mike

Upcoming MSDN Event Topics

benko — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:29:06 GMT

Picking topics for sessions we present at MSDN Events is always an exciting task. Trying to figure out what is interesting, useful and timely topics that ultimately help developers understand and adapt the the rapidly changing technical landscape can be challenging to say the least. We'll be updating the MSDN Event site with the cities and dates of where we'll be, but I wanted to let you know what the thinking around the sessions we'll be delivering in August and September are:

Demystifying WPF

Today’s applications need to do more than simply work. They need to draw in the user, and provide a differentiated experience. This means moving beyond battleship gray forms, boxy UIs, and providing a positive user experience. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides powerful capabilities to develop a compelling user interface, the kind that makes an application stand out. In this session, we’ll examine the core concepts of WPF such as layout panels, data binding, styles and control templates, and we’ll use them to develop an application UI from the ground up.

Ten reasons your applications will be more secure when deployed on Vista

Reputations are tough to shake – particularly in the software industry. While Microsoft Windows has enjoyed great market share, especially in the desktop OS space, its industry position has made it a target for hackers worldwide. Microsoft leadership recognized the need to develop a security engineering approach that could withstand global Internet scrutiny, and Windows Vista is the first desktop operating system to embody this significant philosophy shift. Vista is built from end to end with security at the very forefront of the project. In this session, you'll learn 10 reasons why your application is more secure when it's deployed on Vista. We'll also cover new capabilities designed to protect memory, minimize privilege and provide resource-oriented access control, plus a plethora of additional security enhancements.

Developing applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Service Pack 1 and Visual Studio 2008 introduce a wide variety of new features for targeting Windows, Office and the Web. This includes more controls, a streamlined setup, improved startup performance, fresh graphics features, improved AJAX support, and much more. We’re also introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which are designed to simplify application data access by providing an extensible, conceptual model for data from any source, while enabling this model to closely reflect business requirements. Don’t miss this lively session and learn how to use these powerful new features in your applications.

Launch Demo Code Posted

benko — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:42:28 GMT

I have been on the Visual Studio Launch Tour visiting Chicago, Des Moines, Madison, Omaha, Kansas City and St. Louis over the last couple months. As part of that we've been showing new features of Visual Studio for web development.

I've uploaded the sample web site code from the Visual Studio Launch events onto http://www.benkoTips.com/code. This includes the examples showing style sheets, LINQ and Ajax. If you were able to join me at the launch you've seen the demos, but I'm also working on some screencasts of these which registered users can view by clicking in the link below (note that you will need to have Silverlight installed to view the demos).

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: VS 2008,CSS,MSDN

How to encrypt the Web.Config

benko — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:23:00 GMT

In the security session we did I showed in one of the sample how you can encrypt the web.config file by adding code to the global.asax file. The cool part of this is that using this technique you can secure application specific settings like connection strings and other data in the unlikely event that someone is able to get a copy of the configuration file (like by copying it to a thumb drive from the host machine or something similar).

The basic logic is to create a variable that points to a configuration section, then checking that the section is protected (i.e. encrypted). If it isn't, then call the ProtectSection method to encrypt the contents. The server uses the local DPAPI (Data Protection API) to encrypt the configuration section with a machine specific key, so only that machine can decrypt the contents. The code for this is:

    public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication
    {
        protected void Session_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            EncryptSection("appSettings");
        }


        private void EncryptSection(string sSection)
        {
            Configuration config = System.Web.Configuration
                                   .WebConfigurationManager
                                  .OpenWebConfiguration
                             (Context.Request.ApplicationPath);

            ConfigurationSection configSection =
                               config.GetSection(sSection);

            if (!configSection.SectionInformation.IsProtected)
            {
               configSection.SectionInformation.ProtectSection
                         ("DataProtectionConfigurationProvider");
                config.Save();
            }
        }

Happy Coding!

MSDN Security Session Links

benko — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:04:41 GMT

Technorati Tags: MSDN

MSDN Events is back! It's a new year and this week I'm back on the road delivering MSDN events again. The topics we're covering include ASP.NET Membership, IIS 7.0 and Hacker Tricks...we show how the exploits work and what you can do to prevent them. In the presentation we've got a number of links to more information and to make it easier I'm including those links here for easy access.

These links include the following:

IIS 7.0 - What's new for developers

iis.net - Introduction to IIS 7 Architecture

iis.net - IIS7 Configuration Reference

MSDN - Hosting in Windows Process Activation Service

iis.net - Your Web Platform Security

iis.net - Configuring the IIS7 Runtime

Mike Volodarsky Blog - Developing IIS7 web server features with the .NET framework

ASP.NET Provider Model

MSDN - Provider Model Design Pattern and Specification, Part 1

MSDN - Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Providers: Introduction

MSDN - ASP.NET Login Controls Overview

MSDN - Web Site Administration Tool Overview

MSDN Mag - Client-Side Web Service Calls with AJAX Extensions

MSDN - Client Application Services

AdventureWorksLT Sample Database

MySQL Connector - NET 5.1

Security Hacks

Anti-XSS Library v1.5 Download

www.Fiddler2.com

www.HelloSecureWorld.com

Open Source Web Application Project - Top 10 Exploits 2007

Exploit: Cross Site Scripting - Paypal

Exploit: SQL Injection - www.ri.gov

Exploit: Cross Site Scripting - FTD

Exploit: Insecure Direct Object Reference - Cahoots

Exploit: Integer Overflow - Apple

WCF Performance and Deployment Webcast

benko — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:57:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: FMC MasterClass , WCF

Yesterday I delivered the most recent addition to the Framework MasterClass Webcast Series on WCF Performance and Deployment. We covered issues surrounding the deployment and scalability of WCF services as hosted by IIS and Windows Activation Service. As per usual I've posted the code to BenkoTIPS downloads section, but I promised to include some steps in order to make the IIS deployment work. Specifically we had to add some evidence to executables and assemblies used by IIS 7.0 and to do some registering of components. If you're running on Windows Server instead of Vista you may not need to do the same steps because that is currently running IIS 6.0, but here's what I did in any case...

Configure Windows Vista & IIS 7.0 Features
1. In Windows Vista open Control Panel and then click Programs and then open Programs and Features
2. In the left pane click on "Turn Windows Features on or off"
3. Expand Internet Information Services
4. Expand Web Management Tools | IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility, then select IIS Metabase and IIS 6.0 Configuration Compatibility
5. Expand World Wide Web Services | Application Development Features and then check the ASP.NET checkbox
6. Expand Security and check Windows Authentication. NOTE: necessary related features will automatically be selected as well
7. Click OK to close Windows Features
Add Code Access Security signing to components
1. Open Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Command Prompt (or 2005...)
2. Run the Strong Name utility (sn.exe) to add evidence on iisresolver.dll and svcutil.exe
  - sn.exe -Vr "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\iisresolver.dll"
  - sn.exe -Vr "Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0a\bin\svcutil.exe"
3. Register ServiceModel components
  - c:\> "c:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe" -i

Hope this helps. If you have questions, let me know.

Partially Speaking…

benko — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:20:44 GMT

A good question on Partial Methods

Yesterday in Kansas City I got a question during the LINQ session about partial methods and how they're implemented. This is a new feature found in Orcas Beta 2, and as such, we had a good discussion. I said I'd follow up with a blog post on the topic, so here it is. What are partial methods and why do I care?

Basically a partial method is a way to provide hooks to a class so that it can be extended by users of that class. In the LINQ scenario we are able to add additional processing to events that occur when data is changing in our model. By implementing code against one of the partial methods we can invoke our logic for example when the validation of a data type is called. In our example we threw an exception if the price was set to less than $1.

Partial methods of a given signature can be implemented zero or one times. If the method is not implemented, the compiler optimizes away the call so that no performance hit is taken by the application. If it is, then calls to that method are run through the partial method. Basically the answer to the question of "what if there are multiple partial methods implementing the same signature" is that the compiler will flag an error during the build that the method has already been implemented.

Hope this answers the question. For more detailed information check out the blog posts below:

On the road with LINQ, WCF and Silverlight

benko — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:37:22 GMT

…With a boulder on my shoulder feelin' kinda older I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground…

-Bruce Springsteen

This quarter we're back on the road bringing some great technology & tools for building software that takes things to a whole new level. From the data integration capabilities of LINQ to working with the cross-browser presentation experience, you'll find we've got some fun stuff happening at MSDN Events. I will be on the road starting in Madison, then touring the upper Midwest to visit cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Green Bay and more to show what's possible with these new tools.

As part of these events I like to post links to resources on the topics we're talking about. The links for this quarter include:

LINQ

WCF

Silverlight

Enjoy!