DevWeek 2008: Tuesday 11 March

NOTE
The information on this page refers to DevWeek 2008. This site will be updated with information on DevWeek 2009 closer to the event.

Tracks 1–5 DevWeek Track 6 &Track 7 SQL Server DevCon 09.30 Technical Keynote – Are you ready to write Rich Interactive Applications? Dave Wheeler What a difference a year makes. The focus of the DevWeek 2007 keynote was ASP.NET AJAX and how it’s changing the face of the Web; but in the intervening twelve months we’ve seen the emergence of new RIA frameworks such as Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe AIR. These new technologies have the potential to revolutionise Web programming (or should that be Web applications?), but are they just hokum or is there real substance behind them? Is AJAX dead in a world where you can write managed code on the client? Or will standards-based development win out? And what is the sweet spot for Silverlight? Take your places for the ride of the year as Dave tackles these questions, debunks the myths and explores the realities of RIA development using these next generation technologies. One thing’s for sure; there’s no excuse for writing boring Web applications ever again. 11.00 Coffee Break 11.30 TRACK 1 Introduction to LINQ and C# 3.0 Tim Ewald Language Integreate Query, or LINQ, is the single most important developer technology that Microsoft has shipped since .NET 1.0. The goal of LINQ is simple: make it orders of magnitude easier to program with data. Today’s developers spend a horrendous amount of time writing code to map between objects, SQL data and XML. Object oriented frameworks that attempt to address this problem abound. LINQ takes the fundamentally different approach of extending the language with query syntax and operators so that data can be handled natively, no extra framework required. This talk introduces LINQ and the features that were added to the C# language to support it. It’s a must attend talk for .NET programmers who work with data. TRACK 2 10 ways to improve your code Neal Ford No one writes perfect code. This session shows 10 strategies to improve your code, including fundamentals, code smells, sacred cows, anti-objects, good citizenship, test-driven development, nuances of your language, colour-coding your world, the DSL style of coding, and abstraction distractions. Each topic includes an example, with before and after snapshots of code. TRACK 3 ASP.NET AJAX application design Fritz Onion ASP.NET AJAX has brought the world of client-side programming to ASP.NET developers with a complete set of tools and controls for building highly interactive AJAX-enabled web applications. With these tools, however, comes a new set of design considerations for web applications that were not present when building traditional post-back ASP.NET applications. This session will explore the many design issues that come up when you begin integrating ASP.NET AJAX into your web applications, including both pitfalls and notable benefits. Topics covered will include reducing server chattiness, optimizing request and response sizes, managing navigational history, caching data in the browser, implementing predictive fetching, and building pages that support multi-stage downloading. TRACK 4 Building great web experiences with Silverlight 1.0 Jeff Prosise Silverlight is Microsoft’s new cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and presenting immersive media experiences in the browser. Version 1.0 features a XAML drawing engine, a JavaScript API, rich media and media streaming support, and a rudimentary asynchronous networking stack. This session introduces the Silverlight 1.0 programming model and provides developers with the knowledge they need to start building Silverlight apps today. TRACK 5 Test-Driven Development in C# with NUnit Kevlin Henney Test-Driven Development is a buzzword that it appears no modern developer can be without. However, it is practical understanding of the concepts and tools that makes the difference in development, not just buzzword conformance. TDD is more than just unit testing and it is more than simply using NUnit somewhere on a project. Aimed at an audience of developers and architects, this session outlines the core motivation and practices that make up TDD. It also includes a brief tour of NUnit, the most commonly used unit testing framework for .NET development. TDD practices are demonstrated on a simple practical example using C# with NUnit. TRACK 6 SQL Server 2008 – new features for developers Peter DeBetta SQL Server 2008 has a host of new features for developers, both in Visual Studio and in the SQL Server Engine. This session will introduce attendees to topics such as LINQ, the Entity Data Model, and the new Geometric, Geographic and FileStream data types available in SQL Server 2008. Some SQL Server, C#, and ADO.NET experience is assumed. TRACK 7 Errors and exceptions in SQL Server 2005 Adam Machanic Exceptions can occur in even the most stringently-tested software, simply because not every condition can be checked for in advance. And although we can’t always anticipate an exception, it’s important to design our software so that it can recover gracefully when and if one does occur. In this session you will learn the ins and outs of SQL Server exceptions: types of exceptions, when and why they’re thrown, and how the server treats them. Also covered will be error and exception handling techniques and SQL Server 2005’s TRY/CATCH syntax. Attendees should have at least a basic level of T-SQL knowledge. 13.00 Lunch 14.00 TRACK 1 A tour of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework v3.5 Daniel Moth Want to know how Visual Studio 2008 differs from every single previous release of Visual Studio? Do the terms “red bits” and “green bits” confuse you? Are you having a hard time finding what exactly is new in the .NET Framework v3.5 – the complete list? Have you got an interest in exploring what the new C#3 and VB9 language features can do for you today and not tomorrow? This talk will satisfy all of those questions plus more. After attending this session, the first thing you will do when you go back home is move your VS2005 projects to VS2008 – that’s a promise! TRACK 2 WPF fundamentals Dave Wheeler There are a number of important fundamental topics that you need to become familiar with if you’re completely new to WPF. These include the use of XAML to declare user interfaces; the new dependency and attached property mechanisms; understanding the visual and logical trees; the routed event model; how to use resources; and how applications are packaged. This session will cover all of these essential areas in depth and will set you up for any of the further WPF sessions in the conference. TRACK 3 Building ASP.NET AJAX controls Mike Ormond In this session we’ll take a look at the extensibility features of ASP.NET AJAX that enable us to build richer client and server controls. First we’ll explore the distinctions between client components, behaviours and controls and build ourselves a simple client control. Shifting to the server we’ll examine what’s required to create extender controls, and how you can encapsulate ASP.NET AJAX functionality in your own server controls. TRACK 4 Building great web experiences with Silverlight 2.0 Jeff Prosise Silverlight is Microsoft’s new cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and presenting immersive media experiences in the browser. Version 2.0 features an enhanced XAML drawing engine and even richer media and streaming support than 1.0, and it extends the Silverlight programming model to support .NET in the browser, complete with generics, isolated storage, networking, threading, and other features of the .NET Framework. Join the fun as Jeff dives into Silverlight 2.0 and explains how to leverage it to the fullest to build a whole new generation of Web applications. TRACK 5 Pattern Connections – Part 1 Kevlin Henney Audience: Developers and architects Patterns are often considered and presented in isolation or as part of a loosely themed catalogue. However, much of their power comes from connecting them together to describe whole systems or frameworks and how to build them. This first session revisits core pattern concepts, using examples to illustrate trade-offs involved in favouring one design over another and how the appropriateness of a pattern is sensitive to the context in which it is applied. Examples are presented using UML and code in various languages. TRACK 6 Performance related to Database Object and Indexes Niels Berglund If you want good performance from your database you have to have a good database design to begin with, and a sensible use of indexes. In this session we look at things that can affect performance based on the objects in the database, and how to make sure we are architecting our databases in the best possible way. Some of the things we will talk about are how to best utilise indexes, and how we can partition tables to achieve best performance possible. Intermediate T-SQL knowledge is assumed. TRACK 7 Datetime related problems and temporal queries Itzik Ben-Gan Datetime manipulation is in the heart of every database system. The datetime datatype introduces many challenges due to different language and cultural conventions and due to the fact that to date there’s no separation between date and time. This session will talk about the challenges involved with datetime manipulation and techniques to address those. The session will also discuss querying problems related to temporal data including overlaps, grouping by week and so on. Attendees should have at least a moderate level of experience with T-SQL querying and programming. 15.30 Coffee Break 16.00 TRACK 1 The ABCs of programming WCF Aaron Skonnard WCF brings many improvements, the most significant of which are the simplified developer experience and improved productivity. Learning WCF’s unified programming model for building distributed applications is as simple as learning your ABC’s: the three fundamental concepts include Addresses, Bindings, and Contracts. This session shows you how to get started today. TRACK 2 Writing data-driven WPF applications Dave Wheeler WPF is the richest graphical user interface technology ever produced by Microsoft, but the presentation of data is critical to the majority of today’s applications. In this session you will learn how to efficiently display data using WPF’s many data-binding techniques. Exploring the full gamut of features including the use of binding converters to display data graphically, data templates, validation, error handling and asynchronous binding; you will see how easy it is to produce complex applications with the minimum amount of code. You will also discover how to ensure that your own types support data binding to the maximum level possible. TRACK 3 Working with Enterprise Library in ASP.NET Alex Homer In recent years, the Microsoft Patterns & Practices (p&p) group has been producing guidance and software that makes building enterprise applications easier. Recent releases include the Enterprise Library – a combination of the various application blocks released in the past under as a single installable solution that combines integration between the blocks with a comprehensive configuration and management system that makes it easy to add the blocks to your applications, and configure them. The blocks also now support a standard system of exposing functionality to users, and enabling the creation of custom providers. This session looks at what the Enterprise Library can do for you, some of the ways you can use it (including in Partial Trust mode), and an introduction to creating custom providers. TRACK 4 Silverlight tips, tricks, and techniques Jeff Prosise Silverlight presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for developers looking to build cutting-edge Web applications. This session presents tips and techniques for getting the most out of platform. Highlights include switching from unmanaged to managed code on the fly, content packaging and asynchronous content downloads, enhancing the install experience, advanced XAML programming techniques, techniques for optimizing performance, and a whole lot more! TRACK 5 Pattern Connections – Part 2 Kevlin Henney Audience: Developers and architects This second session considers the ways in which patterns may be combined, presenting some of the current thinking on concepts such as pattern compounds, pattern stories, pattern sequences and pattern languages. Along with the concepts, illustrative examples are presented using code and UML, as appropriate. The two sessions encourage attendees to think beyond their conventional pattern vocabulary. TRACK 6 New data types in SQL Server 2008 Niels Berglund SQL Server 2008 (formerly codenamed ‘Katmai’) introduces quite a few new data types (hierarchies, spatial types, file-stream, date, etc.) that will make life easier for developers, as well as enabling developers to create even more advanced applications. In this session we will take a look at some of these new data types, and see how we can use them both from T-SQL as well as from client-side. Attendees will be assumed to have experience with T-SQL and at least a basic level of .NET knowledge. TRACK 7 What’s between index internals, isolation levels and data consistency Itzik Ben-Gan On the surface, your choice of an isolation level for your session or query seems to be fairly simple and straightforward. However, once you get to know index internals and access methods in-depth, you realize that the subject is far from being obvious. For example, when you query data in a read uncommitted isolation, would you expect to get the same row multiple times or skip rows? How about in a read committed isolation or read committed snapshot? Also, would you expect a table scan/unordered clustered index scan to perform differently with different isolations? If your answer to any of the above questions is “no” you’re in for some surprises. This session will try to clear the picture in regards to data consistency and its relationship to internal data structures. Attendees should have at least a moderate level of experience with T-SQL querying and programming. 17.30 Drinks Reception in the Exhibition Hall

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