He's Back Folks!

irwando — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 00:41:00 GMT

I know everyone missed me the last two weeks, but rest assured, I'm back and on top of things. Thanks to all those who were patient in waiting for a response from me. I was bouncing around the East for two weeks in Bermuda and New Jersey, loving every minute of it. Of course, now I'm back in bright, sunny Seattle. Well, I'm back in Seattle at least.

Coming Up

I know articles have been a bit slow lately, mostly from folks out on vacation. End of November to the end of December is always a bit of a slow down around here as everyone heads out for the holidays. Fear not though, we've got a few in the pipe:

Venkat Prasad writes a piece on Exchanging XML data with SQL Server 2000 and Reporting Services via Web Services.
Helena Kupkova will show us how to create bookmarks in XML Streams with the ResetableXmlReader.
Radhakrishnan Srikanth will present a series of articles on different components within System.Xml giving advice on usage patterns and scenarios. Should be great intro reference material for anyone developing XML apps.

We'll also be mixing in some Sql Server XML related articles now and then, and hopefully some other app-building stuff as well. We're actually doing some internal app-building here to test our Whidbey components, and I'm hoping to turn a lot of the development work there into articles up here. I've also set a goal for myself of the new year for updating the home page layout. We're going to do a bit of re-organizing which should result in a more dynamic, relevant front page.

From You!

Keep the questions and feedback coming, I appreciate it all. Over the last couple of weeks I have seen a few general problem areas:

XML in Compact Framework - Unfortunately, this is not something our team owns. The Mobile team owns this, so if you have questions about XML components in the Compact Framework head over there.
XML Downloads - The page is a bit old, that should be updated next week. Just to clarify the latest bits are:

As I continue to see more trends in questions I'll try and point them out up here.

Of course, it wouldn't be a blog post if I didn't ask for some feedback. Starting soon (right after the new year) we'll being thinking about Tech Ed '05. The XML group should be there with talks and a booth again, but is there something you specifically want to see? A particular topic discussed in a talk or other forum? No promises, of course, but send me your ideas and I'll see what I can do.

Happy Holidays!

Tech Ed Prep

irwando — Fri, 07 May 2004 21:08:00 GMT

The past couple of weeks I've been working on my slide deck and demos for Tech Ed (DAT 405 if you're coming). My biggest concern is to make sure that my talk isn't stale. I want to ensure that anyone who comes, whether they're brand new to SqlXml or they've used it for years, gets something out of the talk. Therefore, I'm approaching it a bit differently.

Usually we give the standard history of SqlXml, go through each feature, explain what it does, one or two small demos and an “application” demo which usually consists of a small winforms app and a few lines of code that fill a text box with XML. This year though I've (we've, to those who've helped put it together) tried to focus more on real-world application scenarios.

For example, for one of my demos I've taken Dare's RSSBandit news aggrigator and SqlXml-ified it. In this demo alone I get to cover Annotated XSD, XPath, Managed Classes, Updategrams, and Bulkload. Making it even better is that you can see how each of these fit into an actual application rather than just a form with some text and buttons.

Oh, and I think the other demo will be Andy Conrad's excellent work on using SqlXml to create Decoupled Domain Models (apparently this is the new buzz word for the old buzz word of “business objects“.

I'm hoping that this will be a much more enjoyable way to present the capabilities of SqlXml, both for me so I don't have to talk about slides for 45 minutes and for attendees so they (YOU!) can see SqlXml in action rather than just listening to these abstract thoughts.

So, come by and meet me, pound me with all those buring questions I know you have, yell at me for not having feature X, or just come out for drinks. Webdata as a while will also have a booth there, I encourage you to come check it out.

Irwin Dolobowsky's Blog : Conferences

He's Back Folks!

Tech Ed Prep