.net and other interesting dev stuff in PA : SQL Server

Escape Yesterworld!

sspotts — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:03:00 GMT

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.

Philadelphia SQL Server and Philly.NET User Group Special Event - Itzik Ben Gan "Outside the Box" session

sspotts — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 22:45:00 GMT

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

VSTS Beta 2 VPC Available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads

sspotts — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 22:13:00 GMT

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

August Philadelphia SQL Server User Group meeting

sspotts — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 02:30:00 GMT

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

Do your ETL processes require complex workflow management ? Have you encountered limitations in defining your required workflow using your current ETL Tool ? In this session you learn how to utilize SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to define Precedence Constraints and Expressions to meet your complex workflow management needs. Find out how looping containers and other tasks such as conditional splits can take advantage of constraints and expressions to satisfy your workflow needs. Leave this session on the right path towards getting the most out of your Integration Services implementation.

Our Keynote Speaker will be Joe Toscano. Joe has been working with SQL Server since version 6.5 and prior to that he worked with Sybase and Informix as a developer, DBA, consultant, mentor and instructor. As a former SQL Server instructor for Idea Integration / Actium and Learning Tree International, Joe has extensive presentation experience and thoroughly enjoys teaching and lecturing various SQL Server topics.

The group will be giving away an XBox in a drawing at the end of the night.

Please register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279073&Culture=en-US.

Philadelphia SQL Server User Group meeting - Reporting Services

sspotts — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 19:21:00 GMT

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 5:30 PM - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 8:30 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Microsoft Malvern Office
MPR I
45 Liberty Boulevard, Suite 210
Malvern, Pennsylvania 19355
United States

General Event Information
Products: SQL Server and Visual Studio.

Recommended Audience: Developer and IT Professional.

Intro to SQL Server Reporting Services

Connected Systems Competition

sspotts — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 05:06:00 GMT

Do you dare?

Show us what a great developer you are!
Show us how innovative you can be!
Win $50,000 USD.

Demonstrate your skills with SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk by entering the Connected Systems Developer Competition. There are 15 categories that will be used to judge the competition.

SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands-on labs available

sspotts — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 17:30:00 GMT

Are you ready to experience SQL Server 2005?

Announcing the launch of the SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands on labs. In these labs, you will get to experience many of the new features in SQL Server 2005 including CLR integration, XML support and deep business intelligence integration.

Just follow the link and experience SQL Server 2005 for yourself

Registration link:
http://msdn.demoservers.com/login.aspx?group=sql2005

Visual Studio hands-on lab last week

sspotts — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 10:21:00 GMT

Last week we had our second hands-on lab in the Microsoft Malvern office, with 65 attendees. In this lab we reviewed new features in Visual Studio 2005's IDE, generics, partial classes, and other CLR and language changes. The lab was well received, but I put together so many labs that we didn't get through most of them. This just gives the attendees something to do at home!

Next month we have the next SQL Server 2005 lab, and registration is at http://www.phillydotnet.org/Default.aspx?tabid=362. This third in the series of Hands-On Labs is focused on SQL Server 2005. We’ll be covering backup and recovery, clustering, security, and new functionality including database mirroring and what the new features will mean to Database Administrators. We’ll briefly run through the major new features and focus on how they will affect database administration. We will be supplying lab material, instruction, and proctors; attendees will be required to bring laptops that are capable of running Virtual PC (install your own prior to attending or we’ll supply evaluation copies). As always, at least 1+ GB RAM and 10+ GB of free hard drive space, 2.0+ GHz processor is recommended.

Pittsburgh .NET User Group meeting on Tuesday

sspotts — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:27:00 GMT

It was a cold and blustery night... :)

I drove to Pittsburgh (and back) on Tuesday night to meet Craig Oaks and the PGH.NET folks for the first time, and gave a presentation about Avalon to kick off the meeting. It looked like around 30 people attended, which was somewhat impressive given that it was snowing and under 30 degrees!

David Hoerster, from Ciber, gave the main presentation, and it was a sight to see him covering Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2004 all in one session! I thought he did a credible job, and the cool thing was that this wasn't just a talk about the products - it was about his experience in using them on a project as well.

First of our SQL Server Hands-on labs

sspotts — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:35:00 GMT

On Tuesday we had a hands-on lab around SQL Server 2005, sponsored by Microsoft, the PhillyDotNet User Group, and the Philadelphia SQL Server user group. 63 developers and about 6-8 volunteers came for 2.5 hours in this first intro level lab. Next month (1/11) is the Visual Studio 2005 lab. Each month we're alternating between SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, with different topics for the labs.

Lots of interest, full room, pizza, soda, and code! What more could one want on a Tuesday night?

SQL Server Developer Survey - Prizes!

sspotts — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:30:00 GMT

From our SQL Server Product Group:

This is an invitation given by Microsoft to leading edge application developers to participate in a research survey that seeks feedback on improving the application development experience working with data platforms. In the best interest of developers, the objectives of this survey are:

To understand the existing, as well as upcoming challenges that has the potential of hindering optimal performance and productivity of those who develop applications and software components.

To direct software manufacturers and its partners toward building powerful products that enable greater success among software development professionals.

Determine the levels of priorities around improvements in data handling from the view point of developers.

This survey should take 10-15 minutes at the maximum. We encourage you to be as honest and candid with your feedback, and to reflect the current state of your experience today on the primary database and development tools you use.

Click on the link below to enter the survey site and see if you qualify for the profile of respondents we seek to complete this survey. Great prizes will be raffled off among the first 500 respondents who meet the target profile and complete the survey.

Click here to enter the survey site and see if you qualify for the profile of respondents we seek to complete this survey. Great prizes will be raffled off among the first 500 respondents who meet the target profile and complete the survey.

To e-mail to a friend, click here.

Code Camp: Greater PA

sspotts — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:35:00 GMT

There was some great stuff done by Thom Robbins, one of my teammates in the East Region (up in Waltham, MA), with Code Camp II (http://weblogs.asp.net/trobbins/archive/2004/10/21/246018.aspx). Forty people presented over 60 sessions over 20 hours in two days.

The goal of the Code Camps series is to provide an intensive developer to developer learning experience that is fun and technically stimulating.

Tonight I brought this up to the PhillyDotNet user group as an event to bring to the Greater PA area, and the whole group was psyched, and so am I. The primary focus for our event will be on delivering programming information and sample code for Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 as well as Microsoft's other platform servers. The event is free and all slides, manuals and demo code will be provided. I'm planning to do this over a weekend in April 2005.

If you're interested, I'm be looking for speakers. RD's, INETA speakers, Microsoft Partners, authors, MVP's, user group leaders, or developers that just want to show how to do cool coding are all welcome. Any speakers at the Code Camp in Waltham will be most welcome to replicate his/her presentations down here!

I like the idea of the following tracks:

ASP.NET 2.0 Development (including WSS web parts)
Smart Client development (Winforms, mobile apps, tablet PC)
Patterns and Best Practices (focus on Enterprise Library)
SOA (think WSE, BizTalk 2004)
Data Access (SQL Server 2005, ADO.NET, etc.)
Dev Lifecycle (all about VSTS)

Presentations will all be aligned to these tracks. Event planning is work in progress, but it's too cool not to do.

There will be three types of scheduled 90 minute sessions.

Presentations. 200 level (50% code/50% Powerpoint), 300 level (75% code/25% PPT), and 400 level (90%+ code)
Roundtables. 3-4 subject matter experts discussing specific topics.
Chalk Talk. No presentation, just attendee-guided discussions and whiteboarding with a subject matter expert.

If you'd like to present at this event, please send me the following info prior to February 1:

Name, title, company
e-mail address
Phone
Which track (see above)
What level (200/300/400)
Name of session
Format of session (Presentation/Roundtable/Chalk Talk)
Description of session

I'm asking for speakers early so I can resource the best venue for the event. I'll want slides (including speaker notes) and demos by March 15th so we can review them and get them ready for distribution for the event.

There are a few other things I'm trying to connect with this Code Camp, so stay tuned.

PhillyDotNet User Group meeting on 11/17/2004

sspotts — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:16:00 GMT

We had a great meeting tonight, about 105 people in attendence. Michael Geiser, of SEI (where the meeting was held), gave a 15 minute talk about security issues. This was followed by some user group news by Bill Wolff, the user group leader.

Next we had a talk from the sponsor of the meeting, SolvePoint's Jamie Horan gave a presentation about writing procedural code (managed code) for SQL Server 2005. Reed Sutton, the local Microsoft SQL Server Technology Specialist, finished up with a review of SQL Integration Services (the services formerly known as DTS), database mirroring, snapshots, and using XML as a datatype.

SQL Server/Visual Studio 2005 Hands-On-Labs in Greater PA

sspotts — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:08:00 GMT

In conjunction with the PhillyDotNet and Philadelphia SQL Server user groups, we're doing a series of monthly hands-on-labs around SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. See the schedule at:

http://www.phillydotnet.org/Default.aspx?tabid=362

These labs will require attendees to supply laptops and we'll be supplying the rest. The laptops should be capable of running Virtual PC, and if VPC is install prior to the lab it'll save time. For those that don't have fully licensed copies, we'll supply evaluation versions. Watch the link above for sign-up information.