.net and other interesting dev stuff in PA

I haven't posted for a while, having been out on infant care leave with my wife and new twin boys, and I've taken a new job outside of Microsoft at Computer Aid, Inc..  My new blogsite is:  http://www.geekswithblogs.net/sspotts/.

Microsoft was a great place to be, but the time and travel demands I was looking at just didn't balance with the time I wanted to spend with my boys.  There were several people at Microsoft that said that the work/life balance wasn't skewed enough towards time with their families, and they gave something up.  I wasn't willing to do that.

I'll still be active in the community, especially with the PhillyDotNet and one or two other user groups, but not the 15 or so groups I worked with in the past.  Look for a few Code Camp events coming to Philadelphia in the Jan/Feb timeframe :).

--Stan

Tamar Granor, a FoxPro MVP who is starting this group, will be presenting at the Microsoft offices in Malvern, PA.  The meeting starts at 7pm, so please try to arrive 15-30 minutes sooner.

This presentation wil be Using the VFP Debugger Effectively.

Visual FoxPro has a powerful debugger that provides many tools for finding problems with your code. This session will dig into the Debugger by working through a buggy piece of code, and show you how to step through code to find problems, how to set breakpoints, how to use Event Tracking and the Coverage Profiler and more. Overall, the session will teach you to make the most of the Debugger's tools in order to speed development, improve your code, and understand VFP better.

Please register at: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032280764&EventCategory=1.

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting. Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000. She is the magazine's Technical Editor and co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column.

Tamar is author or co-author of nine books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent book is What's New in Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits. Her next book, due this fall, covers the use of VFP's SQL language for managing local data. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing (www.hentzenwerke.com).

Tamar is a Microsoft Certified Professional and a Microsoft Support Most Valuable Professional. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe, including every FoxPro DevCon since 1993. She is a Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as Technical Content Manager for the 1997-1999 Visual FoxPro DevCons and was part of the coordination team for the Visual FoxPro Excellence Awards.

You can reach her at tamar@thegranors.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

The Charlotte portals Code Camp just got even more horsepower! Doug Turnure, my fellow DE down there, has enlisted Ted Pattison and David Leininger as speakers.

Ted Pattison is a published author and an industry-leading trainer and consultant who specializes in building portal applications and collaborative solutions with SharePoint Products and Technologies. Ted has been recognized by Microsoft as an MVP with Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office Portal Server 2003. He has delivered his advanced SharePoint training and consulted with developers and system administrators from companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Countrywide, Morgan Stanley, Mattel and Viacom. Ted is also a best-selling author of books focused on developing for the Windows platform and a columnist with MSDN Magazine.

David R. Leininger sent his first email in 1979, and has been involved with software ever since. He served as a director of international operations in the 80s for a high-end database company, then began writing code for a living in 1992. He has presented seminars on object oriented design and development in more than a dozen countries. Recent projects include large-scale portals for educational institutions, and senior developer on one of the largest .NET applications in the country for a governmental body.

Agenda:

8:30-9:00 registration
9:00-9:15 Opening statements
9:15-10:45 Session 1 Developer’s Deep Dive into SharePoint Products and Technologies – Ted Pattison
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Session 2 Creating Portal Applications with Web parts in ASP.NET 2.0 – Ted Pattison
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:00 Session 3 DotNetNuke, part 1 - David Leininger
3:00-3:15 Break
3:15-4:45 Session 4 DotNetNuke, part 1 - David Leininger
5:00-5:15 Closing statements/giveaways

We had our third meeting tonight, and had about 9 attendees.  Unfortunately for the late cancellations, we had a great session by Michael Webber and Darrin Weber from Air Products who presented their document tracking solution and deployment strategy.  Lots of custom adapters, integration with Remedy, and more.  Good stuff!

The BizTalk User Group meets on the first Wednesday of each month in the Microsoft Malvern office.  Their new support web site is at www.pabtug.com.  If you're in the Philadelphia area, and interested in meeting with other BizTalk users, developers, analysts, and managers, be sure to sign up at the web site to get onto the mailing list for meeting announcements.

We had about 50 people attending the DotNetNuke SIG meeting tonight at the Microsoft office in Malvern, PA.  There were three talks tonight - one by Bill Wolff, the PhillyDotNet User Group leader, one by Hal Dell, the DotNetNuke SIG leader, and the final talk by Todd Davis, from Seabury Design.

Bills talk was about database tricks: We saw the database structure in DNN 3.x including tables, stored procedures, and views. Sample code that automates page and module creation will be reviewed. This technique can saves lots of time when you have many pages with similar content.

Hal's presentation was on how to develop a Scheduled Task within the DotNetNuke Framework. While DNN tasks are similar in concept to Services; DNN Scheduled Tasks have some limitations were discussed.

Finally, Todd presented on SqlDataProviders.  Packing a DotNetNuke module from distribution requires the creation of the 01.00.00.SqlDataProvider file, which installs the tables and stored procedures required by the module. This process requires some careful finesse and fine tweaking to be successful. Todd demonstrated how to create this file by hand, and how to edit it properly so that DotNetNuke can consume it during installation. Afterwards, he showed how to automate the process using ScriptBuilder.  Todd, BTW, is very much involved at the DNN training site.

The New York-based company, which has a stable of about 280 prebuilt adapters to back-end systems, announced Tuesday it's selling the source code and intellectual property from eight of its adapters to Microsoft.  See the article...

Thanks to all who attended today’s Power Session on Exploring the Integrated Environment that I presented this morning.  Please find the session video here and the slides here.

Windows Vista Beta 1 is now available on the MSDN subscriber downloads site.  Yet another example of why MSDN subscriptions rock!

And if you're a developer, check out the Windows Vista Developer Center.

Wow, someone had a lot of time on their hands!

http://www.escapeyesterworld.com/

One of the more humorous ways I've yet seen to promote the benefits of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.

Become part of the BizTalk Server 2006 Beta Team and get BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 1. BizTalk Server 2006 builds on the core architecture of BizTalk Server 2004 and makes strides in all dimensions of business process automation including application-to-application, business-to-business, and business-process management.

Sign up today as part of the BizTalk Beta Team and help test BizTalk Server 2006 betas. As a beta tester, you will be asked to install, test, and report bugs on BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 1.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/bts2006beta.mspx for more info.

You’ve heard the buzz about Indigo, Microsoft’s unified programming model for building distributed applications. Attend this FREE event and learn how Indigo technology will simplify your life.

With Indigo, you use the tools and language you’re familiar with, and a single programming model with all the functionality you need. And Indigo is built on standards, so the applications you write will work with applications on all participating platforms.

Join us as we build Indigo demos from scratch and see firsthand how it works. Stop struggling with the dirty work. Indigo makes it easy to develop secure, reliable, interoperable web services, so you can focus on what really matters.

Register today! Space is limited.

Every guest will walk away with:

• An inside look at Microsoft's next-generation web services platform.
• The ability to quickly build secure, reliable web services.
• David Pallmann's Programming Indigo Beta 1 book
• A special DVD of the latest Indigo bits, content, labs and demos
• The chance to win T-shirts and an Xbox

See the Indigo Roadshow site for more info and to register for the event.  Watch this space for additional information as we get closer to the event.

The Philadelphia SQL Server User Group, Philly.NET User Group, and Microsoft are delighted to together host a special Philadelphia Development Community event with world renowned SQL Server expert Itzik Ben Gan.  This event is free but requires advanced registration.

SQL querying problems, especially the tough ones, have very much in common with pure logical puzzles and brainteasers.

Some SQL problems seem too hard, or impossible to solve; however, by applying pure logic you can often come up with short, efficient set-based queries.

By practicing logical problems that seem unrelated to SQL at first glance, you can improve your "outside the box" thinking, and your ability to solve tough querying problems.

In this session you will be presented with pure logical puzzles and brainteasers that require outside the box thinking, and also tough T-SQL problems that require logical deductions.

Itzik Ben-Gan is a Principal and Founder of Solid Quality Learning. A SQL Server Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1999, Itzik has delivered dozens of training events across the US and Europe focused on T-SQL Programming, Performance Tuning and Internals, Administration, Implementation, Data Warehousing and OLAP. An accomplished author, Itzik has written many articles for SQL Server Magazine as well as articles and whitepapers for MSDN and co-authored the book Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 (APress). Itzik's speaking activities have spanned more than 6 years including Tech Ed, DevWeek, PASS, SQL Server Connections, and SQLU Summits to name a few.

In the last 10 years Itzik has been involved in many projects covering various database related technologies. From manufacturing systems, through analytical systems, financial, performance and availability tools, SLA/SLM etc. Besides helping customers with their pressing needs, fixing their problems and optimizing their databases, Itzik helped the developers and DBAs in many of the projects shift to relational/set based "thinking", improving both the performance of their code and its maintainability. Itzik's main expertise is T-SQL Programming, Query Tuning and Internals, but he's proficient in other database areas as well. In 1999 Itzik founded the Israeli SQL Server and OLAP Users Group and has been managing it since.

Teaching runs in Itzik's genes - His father teaches mathematics, his sister teaches English and his brother teaches architecture. Itzik himself is a trainer in his heart and soul and has been teaching IT related technologies for 7 years. Itzik has over 16 years of experience in networking, programming in languages such as Pascal, VB, C, C++, along with designing, implementing, administrating and programming with Microsoft SQL Server. Itzik is the primary author for Solid Quality Learning's Advanced T-SQL Programming courseware along with being a primary resource within their T-SQL related activities.

Registration is at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279223&Culture=en-US

This is great!  Now you don't have to install the tools to do a test drive.  Maybe the developer community could develop custom scripts for hands-on labs that can be shared with others since a standard base VPC image is now available.  That would be a great way to help others learn the cool stuff you dig into yourself.

From Rob Caron:

The much anticipated download of a fully installed & configured Visual Studio 2005 Team System Beta 2 VPC is now available for download from MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

VPC Contents:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (expires September 16, 2006)
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Beta 2 (expires May 1, 2006)
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 2
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Redistributable Package Beta 2
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Community Technology Preview
• Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Live Communication Server 2003

Minimum System Requirements:

• PC with 2.0 gigahertz or faster processor
• 1.5 GB RAM minimum
• 10 GB available hard disk space
• Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher video
• DVD-ROM drive
• Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 software

Join the Philadelphia SQL Server User Group August meeting on Wednesday, August 3, 2005 from 5:00 to 8:30 at the Unisys office at 2476 Swedesford Road, Malvern PA 19355