DevWeek 2008 Pre-Conference Workshops

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

Monday 10 March 2008

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.

	Building great web apps with ASP.NET AJAX WORKSHOP REF: M1 Jeff Prosise ASP.NET AJAX is an extensible, object-oriented AJAX framework that allows you to build Web applications with rich, responsive AJAX UIs and client-side connectivity to Web servers via asynchronous AJAX callbacks. This pre-conference session introduces the ASP.NET AJAX programming model and goes under the hood to show how it works, how it’s extended, and how to leverage it to create cutting-edge Web apps.
	A day of Silverlight WORKSHOP REF: M2 Fritz Onion & Ian Griffiths This day-long tutorial will walk through all of the features of Silverlight from a developer’s perspective. Silverlight is the Microsoft solution for delivering rich, cross-platform, interactive experiences including video, audio, animation, and graphics for the Web and beyond. Utilizing a subset of XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language)-based Windows Presentation Foundation technology, Silverlight enables the creation of content and applications that run within multiple browsers and across multiple operating systems (Windows and Macintosh) with a standard programming model. Consistent with Web architecture, the XAML markup is programmable using JavaScript and works well with (but does not require the presence of) ASP.NET AJAX. This tutorial covers both the 1.0 release of Silverlight, as well as the future 1.1 release, which includes a client-side version of the .NET CLR hosted in the browser.
	Programming Windows Communication Foundation WORKSHOP REF: M3 Aaron Skonnard Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s next-generation platform for building connected systems with the .NET Framework 3.0. WCF makes it possible to build secure, reliable, and transacted systems through a simplified programming model that unifies and extends many of the previous .NET technologies including ASP.NET Web Services (ASMX), WSE, .NET Remoting, .NET Enterprise Services, and System.Messaging. WCF is sure to change the way every .NET developer builds connected systems in the years ahead. This workshop provides fast-paced exposure to WCF and shows you how to get started today.
	Windows Presentation Foundation exposed WORKSHOP REF: M4 Dave Wheeler Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the most advanced user interface application development environment ever produced. It has extensive support for rich graphics and media; full 3D; animation; complex documents; themes and styling; and powerful layout and data binding. In this one-day workshop you will gain a deep understanding of what WPF can do, and how you can make it work for you. We’ll begin with a brief introduction to the underlying architecture of WPF and how to use XAML to declaratively create your user interfaces. Then we’ll dive down into some essential aspects of how WPF works, including the new dependency property model and how to achieve complex user interface layouts using the WPF panels, including how to create your own custom layout containers and how to apply transformations to elements. During this section you will also gain a solid understanding of the visual and logical trees and the event routing mechanism, and how WPF’s command mechanism works. WPF is designed to produce rich applications, so we’ll examine both the 2D and 3D graphic models, and how animations can be applied to elements to spice up the user interface. We’ll then tackle data binding and how it can be used to create data-driven applications using the minimum amount of code. Finally, we’ll examine how to style and theme controls and how to use control templates to enable you to replace the look and feel of a control without having to rewrite it. Attendees need have no prior exposure to WPF, but a general understanding of UI programming and some exposure to XML will be an advantage.
	A day of Visual Studio Team System for developers WORKSHOP REF: M5 Kevin Jones Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) offers developers a rich set of features to help them develop their code. In this talk we cover those features. We talk about source control, focusing on aspects such as branching, merging, shelving and the structure of the source control hierarchy. We look at the testing options open to a developer, focusing on Test Driven Development using the unit testing and web unit testing features of VSTS. The fact that code compiles correctly does not mean that it will work correctly, we will examine the use of the profiling tools within VSTS.
	Architecture Awareness WORKSHOP REF: M6 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. The 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 LINQ and ADO.NET Entity Framework WORKSHOP REF: M7 Niels Berglund ADO.NET in the 3.5 version of .NET framework introduces new ways of accessing data, and also ways to eliminate the impedence mismatch between data models: LINQ (Language Integrated Query) and ADO.NET Entity Framework. In this all-day session we will take a deeper look into LINQ and the Entity Framework and see how it all works. We’ll start with LINQ, and look initially at some of the new language constructs that make LINQ possible. From there we go on to look at how to access data from databases as well as XML data using LINQ. Towards the end of the day we will look at the Entity Framework, and the modeling files necessary to run the framework. Finally, we will put it all together by building an application using LINQ and the Entity Framework. Attendees will be assumed to have some experience of .NET and ADO.NET.
	T-SQL enhancements in SQL Server 2008 WORKSHOP REF: M8 Itzik Ben-Gan The release date of SQL Server 2008 is rapidly approaching, and this new version introduces a number of important T-SQL enhancements that will be covered in detail in this seminar. Here are some of the enhancements that we’ll cover: Several enhancements related to grouping sets giving you flexible options in handling aggregates Several new temporal types including date, time, datetimeoffset and datetime2 The new MERGE statement allowing you to merge data from a source efficiently into a target table Row value constructors Table valued parameters The new hierarchyid datatype helping you handle hierarchical data The seminar will not focus just on syntactical elements of the T-SQL enhancements; rather will show you how to utilize the new language elements to solve common business problems. Attendees should have at least a moderate level of experience with T-SQL querying and programming.

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