DevWeek 2008: Thursday 13 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 9.30 TRACK 1 Async programming in .NET Andy Clymer .NET offers many opportunities for doing asynchronous programming. In this talk we will look at the various mechanisms available to the developer, focusing on the use of IAsyncResult and its associated APIs. We will examine the various mechanisms available to the programmer to perform background work, including looking at the .NET thread pool, and creating your own threads. TRACK 2 SOAP, REST, POX, and RSS – the what’s what of services today Aaron Skonnard It is often said that the strength of the Service Orientation movement is that it is built on standards; however, sometimes it seems that there are so many competing standards that it poses the question, whose standard is standard? This session will examine some of the standards being used by enterprises today, the strengths and weaknesses of each, together with their level of support in today’s toolsets. We’ll specifically show some of the new WCF 3.5 features that enable these different programming models. TRACK 3 Attack and defence: securing ASP.NET 2.0 applications Keith Brown Building secure ASP.NET applications involves much more than calling security APIs. It takes careful design that considers threats and applies countermeasures that solve real problems. It takes a development team that knows how to write bulletproof code, with the foresight and funding to review that code and eradicate security flaws before they can be exploited. Ultimately, it takes education and a good process. This talk will introduce you to many resources: guidelines for threat modeling ASP.NET applications, how-tos for eliminating common security vulnerabilities, and many others. You’ll find that even a small shop can afford to build security into the software development lifecycle. TRACK 4 Writing a mini-game using Silverlight 1.1 Dave Wheeler This demo-only session will show you how to build a fully interactive “mini-game” for the browser using Silverlight 1.1. Covering everything from writing a game loop to downloading sprites to providing an online high-score system, this session will examine many different techniques that will prove highly useful when writing any Silverlight application. Note that this session comes with a health warning: having fun with Silverlight can become addictive. TRACK 5 Communication beyond borders: WCF & BizTalk Services Christian Weyer With a technology code-named “BizTalk Services” Microsoft introduces a set of (Web) Services available in the Internet which can help us realise and implement an ISB, an Internet Service Bus. This talk explains the concept of an ISB, and examines and demonstrates the available services like Connectivity and Identity Services. Based on real-world examples, you will learn which problems you can solve with “BizTalk Services” (not related to the BizTalk Server product!) in the realm of secure connectivity and asynchronous communication patterns through NATs and firewalls – all based on the common and well-known programming model of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). TRACK 6 Message in a bottle: Service Broker from 1 to 100 in ninety minutes Klaus Aschenbrenner Service Broker provides several key new features for building SOA applications directly with SQL Server 2005. This advanced “no slides – just code” session shows you, in just 90 minutes, how to build an SOA-based, secure, reliable, and distributed messaging application with SQL Server 2005 Service Broker from scratch. We’ll cover: the core architectural concepts behind Service Broker; how you can do SOA with Service Broker – a practical approach; advanced topics – from the field; routing between several SQL Server instances; implementing reliable messaging; securing a Service Broker conversation between you and your trading partners; using managed code in Service Broker applications. TRACK 7 Practical optimization of stored procedures in SQL Server Fernando G. Guerrero, Javier Loria & Aaron Johal We see very often that stored procedures do not perform as the user expects. In some cases, standard ad-hoc queries are converted into stored procedures, but we do not see dramatic performance improvements. During this session, we will share with you the typical processes that we follow to optimize stored procedures, the typical errors we find, and how we solve them. Just using stored procedures doesn’t solve your performance problems. People attending this session should have an understanding of performance tuning of SQL Server databases. 11.00 Coffee Break 11.30 TRACK 1 Functional programming in C# 3.0 Oliver Sturm The newest version of C# introduces a number of language features that finally make it very easy to employ a functional style of programming. However, from the perspective of an imperative programmer, there are lots of questions surrounding functional programming. Why would I want to do it at all? Should I drop all state information in my apps? What useful functional patters are applicable to C#? This session uses many practical examples (and some theory) to try and answer these questions. TRACK 2 Building a REST-based system Tim Ewald REST is gaining traction as the preferred way to expose a loosely-coupled programmatic API on the Web. Starting with a brief introduction to the REST model and how it differs from SOAP-based RPC, this talk walks through the process of designing a RESTian interface that leverages HTTP, implementing it in a service, and consume it from a client. Implementations using the new WCF REST functionality and Ruby on Rails provide examples. This is a must attend talk for anyone who feels that SOAP Web services are letting them down. TRACK 3 ASP.NET on the server: the ASP.NET AJAX extensions Jeff Prosise The ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions are the server half of ASP.NET AJAX. Besides adding AJAX-specific ASMX extensions and JSON serialization support to ASP.NET, they enhance the platform with powerful AJAX controls such as UpdatePanel. In this session, you’ll learn all about ASP.NET AJAX on the server and discover how to put it to work building cutting-edge AJAX Web apps. TRACK 4 New features of ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 Fritz Onion This talk will look at the new features of ASP.NET with the 3.5 release accompanying Visual Studio 2008, as well as several enhancements to the IDE that improve the lives of Web developers. We will cover features and intend uses of new controls including the ListView, DataPager, and LinqDataSource. We will also look at Visual Studio 2008 features like the multi-targeting feature that lets you develop for both 2.0 and 3.5, the improved factoring support for CSS, and improved JavaScript debugging. TRACK 5 Building and extending a distributed solution with .NET Framework 3.5 – in action! Christian Weyer Forget Hello World. This session will present you a sample architecture and features of a distributed solution to design and build with the .NET Framework 3.5. Be sure to be mentally prepared – you will see technologies like the .NET Framework, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Forms, ASP.NET and even more in action – beyond the prototypical business scenarios applied in demos. We’ll illustrate the power of WCF and WF – including new web programming and workflow features – with tips and tricks and best practices, incorporated into a holistic application. Let code and config rule. TRACK 6 Scaleout scenarios with SQL Server and Service Broker Klaus Aschenbrenner SQL Server 2005 provides a lot of scaleout technologies. In combination with Service Broker you can build message-based applications that can be scaled out to any required workload and size. In this session you will learn the basics of scaleout technologies available in SQL Server 2005 and in Service Broker. We’ll cover in detail: Service Broker and database mirroring; scaling out with Service Broker; load balancing; routing; Service Broker message forwarders; data-dependent routing. TRACK 7 SQLCLR: design for re-use and maintainability Adam Machanic SQL Server 2005 CLR integration is a powerful tool in the database developer’s toolbox, allowing database code to utilize all that the .NET Framework offers. But with this power comes a variety of new challenges. Security, reliability, modularization, and ongoing maintenance are all handled differently in SQLCLR than in T-SQL, and sometimes can be tough to deal with in the new environment. This session describes the issues at hand and explores the interplay between SQL Server, SQLCLR, and .NET. You’ll learn how to maximize your code’s potential for reuse, while minimizing the amount of work needed to program quality SQLCLRroutines. Attendees should have solid knowledge of SQLCLR basics, including how to create and deploy simple assemblies. 13.00 Lunch 14.00 TRACK 1 Ruby for C# programmers Tim Ewald Ruby is an open-source, open, dynamic, extensible language for building… anything. It’s gained a lot of traction in the Web world, where, paired with the Rails framework, it has provided developers with unbelievable traction. Described as “elegant” and “a joy” and “fun” (!), Ruby provides a simplicity and expressiveness that is hard to match. And its dynamism opens the door to meta-programming techniques that are impossible to replicate in “mainstream” static languages like C# and Java. This talk introduces the Ruby language and environment to C# programmers, focusing on what’s different in the Ruby language and mindset that makes it so easy to fall in love. TRACK 2 Getting started with .NET production debugging Ingo Rammer But… it used to work yesterday! In this session, Ingo Rammer will introduce the hard-core and low-level tools used for production debugging of .NET applications. You’ll learn how to attack the nastiest bugs in your applications, how to look at what’s causing that grinding halt of your ASP.NET application, and how to find the cause of that horrible memory leak in your Windows Forms application. Knowledge of these production debugging tools like WinDbg and SOS is not only important for cases when you really don’t have access to Visual Studio and your source code, but these tools also reveal a lot more information than just the regular managed code debuggers. TRACK 3 ASP.NET AJAX on the client: the Microsoft AJAX Library Jeff Prosise The server controls featured in the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions derive much of their power from the client-side ASP.NET AJAX framework known as the Microsoft AJAX Library. Written in JavaScript, the Microsoft AJAX Library makes JavaScript a richer and more productive environment in which to work. It brings OOP to JavaScript, and it provides a framework of JavaScript classes for implementing partial rendering, drag-and-drop, animations, and much more in Web pages. Better yet, it’s platform-agnostic, so it works in any modern browser and can be leveraged from PHP and ColdFusion almost as easily as it’s leveraged from ASP.NET. This session peels the covers off of the Microsoft AJAX Library and demonstrates how to get the most out of ASP.NET AJAX. TRACK 4 ASP.NET Futures: the brilliant future of the web made-in-Microsoft Dino Esposito Judging from the name, ASP.NET Futures seems like a fancy codename for a new release of ASP.NET. In reality, it is sort of that, but not exactly. ASP.NET Futures is not the sneak preview of a product with a well-defined set of features to eventually sign off; it is rather a download where developers can find glimpses of the future features that the team is currently considering and testing. It would be an interesting session to see what’s coming up and what they’re working on. And more importantly how the team is “seeing” the future of ASP.NET and what we can expect with the next major release of ASP.NET slated for late 2008 or even further. TRACK 5 Beyond the Gang of Four: common enterprise Design Patterns Dave Wheeler Developers and designers are becoming increasingly familiar with the GoF Design Patterns, and will happily churn out Singletons and Factories to their hearts content. But is there a next level in the world of patterns? In this session we’ll examine some of the common enterprise-level patterns that are frequently and practically employed by .NET developers, such as Data Transfer Object and Unit of Work. Not just slides and UML, you’ll get the chance to see where and how these patterns can be deployed for maximum effectiveness. TRACK 6 Understanding the ADO.NET Entity Framework Mike Taulty ADO.NET Version 3.0 raises the level of abstraction at which we deal with relational data in applications by adding a new managed provider which uses a conceptual model which it maps to the actual tables and views of your database schema. This has the advantage of providing the Entity Relationship model that application developers want to code against whilst isolating the application code from the specific language (e.g. T-SQL, PL/SQL) and engine (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle) of the store. In this session we’ll take a good look at the Entity Framework from its mapping layer through to its EntitySQL language and on to its Object Relational Mapping capabilities and LINQ. TRACK 7 Designing highly concurrent SQL Server database applications Adam Machanic Isn’t it amazing how well applications would scale with zero concurrent users? Fortunately for our careers, we often deal with the opposite problem: lots of users, all working with the same data at the same time. This session starts with a discussion of the types of concurrency issues you might encounter, and then moves on to an analysis of techniques for solving the problems that concurrency brings to the table. We will look at both the tools SQL Server provides natively, as well as database and application design strategies that can help to maximize the user experience in highly concurrent applications. Attendees should have a reasonable level of T-SQL experience. 15.30 Coffee Break 16.00 TRACK 1 Developing on Office 2007 with VSTO David Gristwood The 2007 Microsoft Office System is extensible like never before. In this session we’ll look at the numerous ways to extend the various Office applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook and others. Customisations demonstrated will include the new designers and templates for the Ribbon, Actions Pane, Task Pane and Form Regions. This will all be done in managed code from within Visual Studio 2008, and we will also see how to use ClickOnce deployment with VSTO assemblies. TRACK 2 The tricks of production debugging Ingo Rammer WinDbg and SOS are great tools when it comes to production debugging, but without the right strategy and supporting tools, their use can be quite challenging. In this session, Ingo will show you additional techniques and (free) tools which simplify your in-depth debugging work. Or did you ever expect that there are cases when a Kernel Debugger (KD.EXE) is the best way to pinpoint a problem in your 100% pure managed code .NET application? TRACK 3 Building CardSpace-enabled ASP.NET and WCF applications Dominick Baier CardSpace is Microsoft’s implementation of an identity selector. Adding CardSpace support allows your users to securely login without having to use a password, thus eliminating attacks like phishing. While the mechanics of an information card based authentication are slightly different, the general tasks stay the same. This talk covers the philosophy behind CardSpace, but focuses more on the day to day challenges like how to mix information cards with password based logons, how to implement the register/login logic or how to deal with lost cards and roaming users (including the gotchas). Furthermore you will learn about the WCF and ASP.NET APIs and how to share users between these two stacks. We round up with some guidance on how to select and use certificates. TRACK 4 Ruby on Rails for ASP.NET programmers Tim Ewald Rails is a friction-free Web development framework written in Ruby. Built around the MVC model common to most Web frameworks, Rails makes it easy to route and process requests, manipulate system state, and control rendering details, all with a minimum of code. It leverages Ruby’s dynamicism to the hilt: eschewing extensive external configuration in favor of expanding classes on the fly to provide required behavior. This talk introduces Ruby on Rails to developers who build sites with ASP.NET, focusing on the key differences in the processing model and on how the Ruby language facilitates an amazing Web development experience. TRACK 5 Patterns of use with the new Entity Framework James Winters Object Relational Mapping technologies have been used to access application data for some time now, and more developers are becoming familiar with the tools at their disposal, and how to use them within their application architectures. Microsoft will be shipping the Microsoft Entity Data Model for defining domain models and the .NET Entity Framework for building the data access layer shortly after VS2008 (Orcas). So as an architect, you have many choices – you can work with the EntityClient data provider and continue with the familiar DataReader and DbCommand abstractions, or you can use LINQ and Entity SQL based APIs to generate Data Access Layers. In this session we’ll look at the different ways you can use ADO.NET and the Entity Data Model within your application architecture, and try to generalise some patterns for use. TRACK 6 Introduction to MDX Mark Whitehorn MDX is a language that allows you to query OLAP cubes as SQL allows you to query relational databases. In addition, MDX expressions (as they are called) are used to add business logic to the cubes. The language was originally developed by Microsoft in 1997, as part of the OLEDB for OLAP specification. A large number of other manufacturers, such as Hyperion, are now supporting MDX. This talk will introduce you to MDX using practical examples. By the end of it you will have a great grounding in how MDX is used. Attendees should have some familiarity with OLAP cube design, but no prior knowledge of MDX is necessary. TRACK 7 SSIS in SQL Server 2008 – the cool stuff you may not know about Javier Loria & Francisco González In this session we will dive into the things that really make SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) such a cool tool to use. We will look at some of the advanced components in the pipeline like the Fuzzy components, data mining and also text mining. We will also have a look at making SSIS more performant, some of the things you can do to make your packages work better. People attending this session should have an understanding of SSIS already, as we will jump straight into using the product and will not detail the “getting started” aspects. 17.30 Close

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