Looks like I will be doing some traveling... (Russ' Tool Shed) MSDN Events

Ever worked with an existing system’s database and struggled to make sense of it all? A deep understanding of the data schema you’re tackling takes time to develop, but it’s invaluable for successfully navigating the application. Because developers have had to work with one tool to explore and understand the database and another to develop the code, the new capabilities of integrating query into the language known as LINQ will make your development efforts far more effective.

Visual Studio 2008 (formerly code-named "Orcas") provides an innovative and powerful way to manipulate data by treating objects in the IDE as full citizens. The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) enables developers to consistently control data with language extensions and perform data access using new data design surfaces. In this session, you’ll learn the architecture of LINQ and the C# and Visual Basic extensions for writing queries within the development tool you’re already comfortable with. You’ll see specific scenario demonstrations including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML and more. After this dynamic event, you’ll leave with a solid understanding of how LINQ gives you the power to query anything.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) brings tremendous power to developers and architects who are charged with creating distributed systems, but the many coding and configuration choices within WCF can be daunting. When faced with an almost infinitely configurable system, how can you be sure you’re utilizing WCF effectively? Learn how to solve the real-world technical problems that led you to WCF in the first place.

This session will educate and inform both developers and architects about how to build and configure services in WCF using a variety of real-world scenarios as examples. After a brief review of WCF’s code concepts, we’ll explore techniques for building an effective messaging infrastructure, taking advantage of WCF’s many built-in services, including security, transactions, reliability and durability.

Users continue to expect more of the Web. Many sites now feature active animations and media elements, without breaking the browser navigation metaphor or requiring the user to endure long and often complex installations. Microsoft provides a broad spectrum of tools to help developers build applications that target the Web and the desktop. However, a new blended segment is emerging that includes characteristics of both – providing rich experiences and incorporating media elements seamlessly inside the browser. Microsoft Silverlight (the technology formerly known as WPF/E) is a brand new solution that equips developers to create visually stunning, interactive applications that run on multiple browsers and operating systems and are painlessly deployed to the end users.

In this session, you’ll learn all about Silverlight from a developer’s perspective, including how to build rich, interactive applications using the developer IDE of choice, Visual Studio, as well as Microsoft’s powerful new designer tool, Expression Blend. You’ll also see how to create dynamic experiences with the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), how to manipulate the overall application or experience with code, and how to retrieve data and media from a Web service and incorporate it all into a Silverlight application.