DevWeek 2009 Pre-Conference Workshops

NOTE
The information on this page refers to DevWeek 2009. This site will be updated with information on DevWeek 2010 closer to the event.

Monday 23 March 2009

The following workshops run for a full day (from 09.30 to 17.30), with a short break in the morning and afternoon, and a lunch break at 13.00.

Unless otherwise noted in the descriptions, they are presentation-based rather than “hands-on” labs.

	A Day of ASP.NET AJAX WORKSHOP REF: M1 Fritz Onion ASP.NET AJAX is a web development framework for building richer, more interactive web applications. This framework from Microsoft provides both client-side and server-side components for closing the gap between web and desktop user interfaces. ASP.NET AJAX’s browser-neutral client script library is easily integrated with existing web applications (including ASP.NET 1.* and non-.NET sites), improving response times and enhancing UIs with DHTML and Javascript features that in the past would have taken enormous development efforts and extensive client-side knowledge. ASP.NET 2.0 applications can take advantage of ASP.NET AJAX’s server-side features to further enhance their UIs, often through simple markup. This workshop walks you through the components of ASP.NET AJAX, demonstrates the building of a number of ASP.NET AJAX-enabled applications, and shows how best to leverage the capabilities of ASP.NET AJAX to make your clients’ experience a richer one. We will cover features from ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 as well as the upcoming 4.0 release that introduces client-side data binding.
	WCF as a Communication Foundation WORKSHOP REF: M2 Dominick Baier & Christian Weyer You need to model distributed solutions? You need to realise application communication? You need advice? Then bingo! In this workshop Dominick Baier and Christian Weyer will explain to you in a practical and interactive manner how you can use Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) in .NET Framework 3.5 for your needs. Come and learn both interesting basics as well as architectural approaches – be able to judge on their potential and their limits. See how you can bring the rubber to the WCF road in a pragmatic way. In the end, you should benefit from the vast experience of the presenters which is based on numerous real-world customer projects applying WCF – beyond “Hello World”. Let’s act.
	Essential Silverlight WORKSHOP REF: M3 Dave Wheeler Silverlight is Microsoft’s next generation technology for the development of Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) for the Internet. In this one-day workshop, you will gain a thorough understanding of how to use Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Expression Blend to create Silverlight 2 applications. You will learn how to create media-intensive applications with video and audio; use animations to add depth and interest; provide interactivity such as drag ‘n’ drop and resizing of elements using the mouse; work with controls; create Web Services that can be consumed by Silverlight applications; write asynchronous (multi-threaded) Silverlight code; and integrate Silverlight with ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX applications.
	A Day of .NET Design Patterns WORKSHOP REF: M4 Kevin Jones & Andy Clymer The pressure of code delivery often means that developers constantly find themselves writing code using the same old bag of tricks they learnt during their “apprentice years”. In the same way that areas of the platform evolve, so does understanding of good Object Oriented practice. This workshop aims to bring developers up to date on these latest good practices. The process of examining patterns not only facilitates the learning of standard solutions but also helps a developer to evolve a better understanding of OO principles, enabling them to effectively apply these principles to their own unique problem spaces. Patterns introduce a new standardised vocabulary to describe reoccurring techniques enabling developers to communicate far more effectively. Patterns enable adaptive software and simple clear communication between developers and other team members. Software development teams are continuing to focus on agile methods in order to compete. The techniques covered in this workshop will show how it is possible to write code that allows for stable solutions that can evolve quickly. We will show how to write code that is closed for modification but open for extension, a key requirement for such solutions. We will introduce patterns and pattern languages and cover the main patterns in use today, including Observer, Decorator, Factory/Abstract Factory, Singleton, Command and others.
	Architecture Awareness WORKSHOP REF: M5 Kevlin Henney Audience: developers, architects and managers Much is made of the architecture metaphor in modern software development, but sometimes the term seems to be vague or misapplied: just another way of saying ‘design’, the idea of blueprint-driven development, a synonym for technology selection, etc. The current fashion for vendor “marketectures” has also contributed to the confusion over the role and practice of architecture and architects. This Architecture Awareness session aims to explore some of the concepts that are valuable to software architecture, highlight responsibilities that are relevant in the role of architect, and outline some of the myths and misconceptions commonly associated with software architecture. The session outlines specific areas of practice, such as attention to testing and dependency management, with concrete advice. Various architectural styles and considerations are covered, including the role of patterns in describing an architecture, and the relationship between architecture and agility.
	A Day of F# WORKSHOP REF: M6 Oliver Sturm Microsoft Research describes F# as “a scripted/functional/imperative/object-oriented programming language”. Combining all those aspects in one language is certainly not an easy task, but they’ve done a good job of it. F# is interesting both as a language to actually consider for your projects and as a source of features that might make it into the mainstream .NET languages tomorrow. This full-day seminar starts with basic and advanced syntax constructs of the F# language, and goes on to show applications of both functional and imperative/object oriented programming and topics specifically relevant to .NET programming, like exception and IDisposable handling. The day concludes with a quick overview of libraries included with F#, for instance for compatibility with LINQ and asynchronous programming. This workshop is the perfect package to introduce .NET programmers to the F# language and its new world of multi-paradigm programming!
	Query and Index Tuning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008 WORKSHOP REF: M7 Itzik Ben-Gan This seminar teaches you how to optimize problematic queries by tuning indexes and writing efficient code. The seminar covers in detail internal structures and index access methods, which are the fundamental building blocks that you need to be familiar with in order to master the art of query tuning and optimization. Once you get familiarized with those fundamental building blocks, you will learn how to put your knowledge into action by evaluating various indexing options, analyzing their performance, and choosing the most ideal design. You will learn how to tune and optimize your solutions by applying query revisions that can yield improvements in orders of magnitude in some cases. The seminar will also teach you how to get rid of cursors when set-based solutions are most appropriate, and how to identify the uncommon cases where cursors are the last resort that will yield better performance than set-based solutions. This workshop is aimed at SQL Server DBAs and developers with at least one year of experience with SQL Server.
	SQL Server 2008 for Developers WORKSHOP REF: M8 Greg Low This all-day pre-conference seminar covers the key enhancements in SQL Server 2008 for developers. In particular, the session includes coverage of: T-SQL enhancements New data types (including spatial types and filestream) Building occasionally connected applications Enhancements to service broker Enhancements to SQL CLR integration Providing RESTful interfaces via ADO.NET Data Services This workshop is aimed at existing SQL Server developers with at least one year’s experience.

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