The Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog

SharePoint MVP ‘Goes With The Flow’

MVP Gustavo Vélez, from the Netherlands has just released a new book entitled “Workflows and SharePoint: Going with the Flow”.

The book provides a comprehensive reference to guide users through the process of creating a workflow. A case study allows the reader to follow the development of a flow, incorporating the myriad of possibilities and tools available to the developer.

Gustavo’s approach is 'no-nonsense'; based on clearly-defined examples it describes and demonstrates the possibilities and applications of workflows in SharePoint. The programming examples graduate from basics, generating configurations with Sequential and State Machine Workflows, to more complex themes using ASPX and InfoPath Forms.

He attempts to identify potential errors and problems and to provide solutions or workarounds, and in situations where that is not possible, to point the reader in the best direction for answers. 'Workflows and SharePoint: Going with the Flow' is divided into five areas for easy reference. The first two parts focus on information for the general reader; introducing the architecture and use of workflows followed by a description of the use of SharePoint Designer to create flows without programming. Part 3 provides information for the creation of Sequential and State Machine Workflows using Visual Studio and flows over into the next section covering the creation and development of Forms (Part 4). Finally, Part 5 reviews Activities, their use in Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer, and goes on to discuss other 'bits and pieces' related to programming workflows for SharePoint.

Sample code is available from www.krasispress.com

The book is available in English here and in Spanish here.

Learn The Art of Unit Testing

MVP Roy Osherove recently wrote a new book entitled “The Art of Unit Testing”

The Art of Unit Testing guides the reader in the subtle art of unit testing. Based on Roy’s real-world development experiences, this book shows developers how to make sure the code that they write actually works as expected and how to make these verifications as automated as possible.

The book starts out with the basics of how to write unit tests, what makes a good unit test, and how to avoid the pitfalls you may encounter when you try to write unit tests. Readers will learn to build tests that are readable, accurate, and maintainable and pick up a series of best practices and “how-to’s” for key subjects.

Roy establishes rules for good unit tests, built upon the three major principles that any good test be maintainable, trustworthy, and readable. The book also provides clear guidance on what to test and where to start testing and is written for .NET developers but others will also benefit from this book.

Samples chapters of the book can be downloaded below:

Download samples chapters 1 and 3 and buy the book here.

If you’ve read the book, don’t forget to leave a review!

About the author:

MVP Roy Osherove is the chief architect at Typemock and is one of the original ALT.NET organisers. He consults and trains teams worldwide on unit testing and test-driven development. He is a frequent speaker at technical conferences such as TechEd and JAOO. Roy's blog can be found here

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MVPs Tell Us, “I'm a VB!”

Is there anything such as a “typical VB.NET developer”? There are millions of VB.NET developers in the world, and they each have their own unique story. In their own words, our VB MVPs tell us what kinds of applications they’re building, what technologies they’re using and what their favourite features are. Watch the interviews and find out for yourself who today's VB.NET developers really are!

Hat Tip the MSDN Visual Basic Developer Center site!

[Bonus!] Read the text transcript interviews of a wide range of our other VB MVPs!

Are you a VB MVP? The VB Team Blog wants to hear from you!

Submit your own story to the VB Team!

Technorati Tags: Visual Basic,MVP Global Summit,Interviews,.NET,MVP Award Program

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MVP Releases SQL Server 2008 Book

MVP Ross Mistry along with fellow contributing writer MVPs Hilary Cotter, John Welch, Marco Shaw and Maciej Pilecki recently released a new book entitled, “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – Management and Administration”.

Ross presents proven techniques for SQL Server 2008 installation, upgrades, backup/restore, data transfer, indexing, high availability, security and much more. He draws on extensive testing in high-profile production environments to offer step-by-step solutions and powerful tips you won’t find anywhere else. Every chapter begins with a section identifying SQL Server 2008’s most significant new improvements and concludes with a convenient summary of best practices. Each chapter also outlines the benefits of leveraging Windows Server 2008.

The book covers how to:

· Master DBA tips, tricks, and best practices proven in actual enterprise environments

· Install, upgrade or transition to SQL Server 2008.

· Harden and Secure an implementation.

· Encrypt SQL Server from an end-to-end perspective.

· Implement high availability–and leverage SQL Server 2008’s major improvements to failover clustering and database mirroring

· Save time with SQL Server 2008’s new policy-based management tools

· Performance tune and troubleshoot a SQL Server 2008 environment.

· Optimize application performance and manage workloads with the powerful new Resource Governor

· Implement Performance Studio, maintenance plans, Transparent Data Encryption and much more…

About the Author

MVP Ross Mistry had the opportunity to work with SQL Server 2008 two years prior to the product release. When he is not focused on his SQL Server specialties– high availability, migrations, and security–his attention turns to SQL Server development and Business Intelligence. Ross is an author, co-author, and technical editor of more than 10 books. Many of the books have been bestsellers. Recently, he co-authored Windows Server 2008 Unleashed and SQL Server 2005 Management and Administration. He was a contributing writer on Hyper-V Unleashed, Exchange Server 2007 Unleashed, and SharePoint Server 2007 Unleashed. Ross also took on the role of technical editor for SQL Server 2005 Unleashed and SQL Server 2005: Changing the Paradigm.

In addition to being an author and consultant, Ross is a public speaker who conducts seminars on Microsoft topics around the world. He frequently speaks at local SQL Server user groups and international conferences. Most recently, he spoke at the SQL Server PASS Community Summit in North America, SQL Server Europe PASS, SQL Server Connections, and the Microsoft campuses in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. As a SQL Server Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), Ross is heavily involved with the SQL Server community and assists by responding to questions in newsgroups, writing articles for magazines, and blogging for Network World and to IT managers on Microsoft’s TechNet Community Hub site.

Check out his blog here. The book can be purchased here

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Microsoft’s MVP Team Talk on Community Radio!

Join INETA speaker, MVP Steve Andrews as he recently interviewed Heather Kostes, Emily Freet, and Nicole Moser about their roles at Microsoft, the MVP Program, MVP benefits, becoming an MVP, karaoke, and more. The interview took place at the recent TechEd 2009 North America and is full of interesting insights into the program!

You can listen to the radio show here.

About Community Radio

Hosted by Steve Andrews, Community Radio is recorded on the road and explores the many facets of the developer community, including: speaking, writing, podcasting, and user group management. Community Radio is also narrated by you, the community! If you are interested in narrating an episode of Community Radio, please contact Steve Andrews.

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MVP Champions IT Management Professionals!

MVP Derek Schauland specialises in Active Directory and also drives a blog for IT Management. His goal is to provide information that is useful to IT Managers who are just getting started and to seasoned IT Professionals.

Derek has been using his blog very actively as an open forum to chat, discuss solutions and to share ideas with his peers. He has also driven the “IT management Community Talk with Kevin” series with Microsoft Sr. IT Professional Evangelist, Kevin Remde.

During the recent TechEd North America 2009, he joined the IT manager track and was part of the extended Q&A sessions relating to Virtualisation, Business Intelligence and Unified Communications with Microsoft and a range of Community Leaders. Over 800 IT Managers attended these sessions and Derek proactively shared his experiences, provided comprehensive platform guidance for future planning, tips and tricks, best practices, and information around deployment solutions.

Take a look at some of Derek’s excellent contributions below!

· IT Management Community Hub on TechNet

· Microsoft Platform Solutions Center on Information Week:

· Live Chat-Webcast: IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin – Virtualization

· Live Chat-Podcast: IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin – Virtualization

· Live Chat-Webcast: IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin - Business Intelligence

· Live Chat-Podcast: IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin - Business Intelligence

· Live Chat-Webcast: IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin - Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management

· Live Chat-Podcast: IT Manager Community Talk with Kevin - Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management

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Deploying Exchange Server 2007? Register for the French MVP Webcast!

Are you planning to deploy Exchange 2007 SP1 as part of a new installation or upgrade? Before you do, join Exchange Server MVP Laurent Teruin’s, for an online presentation at the Exchange Server User Group, where he will be presenting on the different aspects of messaging infrastructures validation for Exchange. The presentation will take place on Wednesday July 8^th, from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM, French time, in the French language.

The online session is aimed at project managers and IT risk assessment managers, who need to mitigate risks and ensure seamless transitions to updated messaging platforms.

For further information and to register for the event, click here.

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Aussie MVPs Rock ReMix Australia!

Welcome to ReMix Australia! Five Australian MVPs, delivered sessions in early June reaching out to approximately 300 delegates.  This year’s event had two streams, Technical and Designer, and the total audience of 600 was evenly split between the two tracks on the day. Other MVPs who attended as delegates took part in blogging, tweeting and MVP Video Interviews during the day. John & Bronwen, our Live Platform MVPs featured their Wii with Live Maps application which has been well received by Geography teachers & students, allowing students to move through places and explore the world. ReMix Australia also continues to be an event where future MVP candidates tend to make their mark in the community, and we look forward to recognising new MVPs in the future!

Silverlight MVP Jose Fajardo presented The Next Level of Creativity with Expression Blend 3
ASP.Net MVP’s Damian Edwards and Tatham Oddie presented Building great standards based websites for the big wide world with ASP.NET 4.0 with Damian Edwards (ASP.NET MVP) and Tatham Oddie (ASP.NET MVP)
Live Platform MVPs Bronwen Zande and John O'Brien presented <3 the New Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit for Social Websites.

An application prepared by Mobile Devices MVP James McCutcheon was also shown at the keynote to 600 delegates.

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French MVP Embraces eLearning!

French MVP James Ravaille manages the community site, Dotnet France. The site encourages its members to learn Microsoft Technologies such as .NET, SharePoint, SQL Server and XNA. Within the community, James is responsible for managing people and writing e-learning courses and he is also the Test Center Manager.

James has produced a number of courses on various subjects including:

- .NET Languages : C#, VB .NET

- ASP .NET Fundamentals, ASP .NET AJAX, ASP .NET Dynamic Data,

- ADO .NET Fundamentals, LINQ, Entity Framework, ADO .NET Data Services and Microsoft Synchronization Framework.

- WCF, WF and WPF

- Deployment with Windows Installer, ClickOnce and Framework .NET Client Profile

- Microsoft Surface

In fact, you can download a free 38 pages course, about the use of ADO .NET Data Services here!

If you want to improve your knowledge in the design and the development of Applications using Microsoft Technology with French courses, take a look at the Dotnet-France community!

MVP Walkthrough Installing Windows 7 on a Netbook

MVP Dennis Chung like many technical enthusiasts is super excited about Windows 7! He is also a keen user of netbook devices. Netbooks typically ship without optical devices and as such, Dennis has created a short seven minute video showing how to install Windows 7 from a USB drive.

With the general availability of Windows 7 scheduled for October 22^nd, installing Windows 7 from a USB drive will reduce installation time significantly. Note! The video was based on the Windows 7 beta, but will equally work on the current Release Candidate and final release.

Dennis works in the Platform Evangelism Group in Microsoft. His role is to make IT Pros in Singapore successful, evangelise on the newest and upcoming Microsoft platforms and help IT Pros reap maximum value out of Microsoft technologies. He is also the Singapore Windows IT Pro User Group (SWUG) Leader and Microsoft (APAC) Ex-offico (non-voting) board director for Culminis .

Click out the video above to learn more about the installation process.

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Tales from the Toolshed

Have you ever felt inundated with developer tools? Do you ever feel you're missing something that could make your life easier as a developer and a power user? Tool familiarity continues to be one of the top developer challenges. Well, help is at hand, a new series of Channel 9 seminars could help you through this minefield!

Join Microsoft Florida Developer Evangelist Russ Fustino & Microsoft MVP Stan Schultes and others as they bring you demos and discussion about their favourite developer tools.
In Episode 1 of the series, learn about:

• Silverlight Live Plug-in for Expression Encoder
• Live Services – Virtual Earth – (MVP Stan Schultes)
• SysInternals - (MVP Stan Schultes)
• Fiddler
• Windows Live Sky Drive
• WPF Application Styling (guest speaker MVP Jason Beres of Infragistics)
• Visual Studio Tools for Office
• Community Update – Microsoft Developer Evangelist Joe Healy

Episode 2 was filmed at the Orlando Code Camp in front of a live studio audience and includes content on:

· VSTS DB Pro

· Reporting Services

· Virtual PC

· DotNetNuke (MVP Stan Schultes)

· Ms-Build talking to Twitter – (MVP Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi)

· A Community Update by Microsoft Developer Evangelist Brian Johnson

Special thanks to MVP Stan Schultes, recent co-author on his book on DotNetNuke 5, MVP Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi , MVP Carl Franklin, Brian Johnson, Seminole Community College – Sanford, Lake Mary Campus and the Orlando Code Camp Team and attendees, and the many volunteers who made this show a reality!

Additional notes:

• To use the Infragistics WPF Application Styling download, install the NetAdvantage Win Client and then install the Styling CTP.
• Listen to Dot Net Rocks for an interview with Russ and Stan on filming of the show along with some exciting presentation tips and tricks.
• Resources for all of the tools that are featured on the show, can be found here. PowerPoint slide decks, demo code and scripts for the series can be found here.

[Update] The latest Russ’ Tool Shed TV show of “Episode #3, It’s All About The Tools” has been published. Click here to view the latest episode!
Technorati Tags: MVP Award Program,MVP Stan Schultes,Channel 9 Share this post :

MVP Helps To Jumpstart SQL Server 2008!

Singapore SharePoint MVP Sarbjit Singh Gill was recently invited by Microsoft Learning Team to help present two live webcasts, each lasting for 60-90 minutes on SQL 2008 Technology and Certification. The first session was entitled ‘Why Jumpstart SQL 2008 Skills’ where Sarbjit provided an overview for SQL Server 2008 as a technology and how users of SQL Server can jumpstart their skills with Microsoft Certification. The second session, entitled ‘Step-Up SQL 2008 Skills’ covered the benefits and functions of SQL Server 2008 and provided the 105 attendees with an insight into the differences of older versions of SQL Server Vs SQL 2008.

Click on the links below to register and view Sarbjit’s recorded sessions.

- Why Jumpstart SQL 2008 Skills

- Step-Up SQL 2008 Skills

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Belgian MVP Releases SharePoint Tool Basket on CodePlex!

MVP Stéphane Eyskens recently produced a new SharePoint project on Codeplex called “SharePoint Tool Basket”. Within two months of launch, the project has appeared in the Top 10 list of the most popular Codeplex Sharepoint projects; the tool basket is proving very popular with the SharePoint community and has already been downloaded over 5,000 times!

This project aims to re-group a number of different SharePoint tools into one single container. The tool basket offers features such as SharePoint Document Rating, Form Designer, Ajax-enabled lookup field, Content Type Explorer, Feature Explorer and Audience to Group convertor.

If you have an interest in Microsoft SharePoint, the Tool Basket is well worth investigating.

Learn more about the project and download the project bits here.

Technorati Tags: MVP Award Program,MVP Stéphane Eyskens,SharePoint Tool Basket,CodePlex

Canadian MVP Continues His Silverlight Tour

Canadian MVP Laurent Duveau continues to deliver the Silverlight Tour throughout Canada in July and August. The tour is a three-day course and divides Silverlight learning into three distinct areas: Design, Development and the Server-Side Code.

The workshop is structured with a mixture of lessons, demonstrations and hands-on labs. Each student will leave the workshop having created several small Silverlight and Silverlight 2 applications. By using a variety of learning techniques, Laurent aims to help students become proficient in the technology quickly and in an exciting way.

• 3 days of intensive Silverlight 2 and 3 training
• Coverage of Expression Blend and Visual Studio
• Architect Silverlight Solutions
• Communicate with Servers
• Create Dynamic XAML content

For a full outline visit the Outline page

Dates and Locations:

• 13-15 July 2009 (Montreal, Canada)
• 20-22 July 2009 (Vancouver, Canada)
• 3-5 August 2009 (Ottawa, Canada)
• 10-12 August 2009 (Québec, Canada)

Learn more about the Silverlight Tour, by clicking here. If you live in Canada, you can sign up for the course by clicking here.

Indian MVP receives Top Volunteer Award!

Selvaraj Kaliyan, an MVP from Bangalore User Group Lead for Bangalore IT Pro, has been awarded the Top of the Mark - Volunteer Award, in a programme conducted by The Network Professional Association.

The Network Professional Association® (NPA), in conjunction with Interop, Network Computing, Culminis, and Cisco Press, recently announced the NPA's eighth annual Awards for Professionalism program, which honors individuals for their outstanding achievements as professionals within the network computing industry. Awards for Professionalism winners demonstrate the best balance of professional responsibilities including technical competency, ethics and a proper professional, education and industry credentials, community and industry contributions, leadership, professional affiliation.

With thanks to MVP Support Executive, Abhishek Baxi for the story!