DevWeek 2013 Pre-Conference Workshops

NOTE
The information on this page refers to DevWeek 2013. This site will be updated with information on DevWeek 2014 closer to the event.

Monday 4 March 2013

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.

	Building Windows 8 modern UI applications with C# WORKSHOP REF: M1 Dave Wheeler With Windows 8, Microsoft has introduced a whole new paradigm for creating compelling and immersive applications. With great support for touch; easy access to Windows services such as sensors and devices; a rich new runtime in WinRT; and support for a host of different programming languages, Windows 8 offers you an opportunity to deliver great new applications across a diverse range of platforms. There’s a new application lifecycle model to learn; new ways of sharing data between applications; and new sets of controls, templates and ways of deploying Windows applications. This workshop will provide a fantastic insight into how to build new, Modern UI style applications using C# and .NET Framework 4.5.
	Effective architecture sketches WORKSHOP REF: M2 Simon Brown Collaboration and “moving fast” aren’t terms that many people associate with the software architecture role, yet they’re both essential. Why? Because collaborating on the software design process provides a basis for coming up with a better solution, plus it paves the way for collective code ownership. And moving fast requires “just enough” up front design to avoid costly rework, which sits conveniently in that vague area between big design up front and foolishly hoping for the best. Costly rework can be caused by a number of things, ranging from not mitigating the key technical risks through to the team not understanding the high-level structure and therefore being able to work towards the same vision. This requires good communication skills and not being able to effectively communicate your software architecture will slow you down at best. Most people don’t get to practice the software design process all that often and fewer get to hone their communication skills. Join us if you want to practice collaborative software design and learn about how to communicate it through a collection of simple effective architecture sketches.
	A day of writing asynchronous code with C# 5 WORKSHOP REF: M3 Andrew Clymer Asynchronous programming is being pushed further into the norm with the introduction of the new async and await keywords. It is therefore becoming more and more important that we write async libraries for our own application stack. During this intensive day we will do a deep dive into how these new features work, and into the mechanics of how best to deliver asynchronous functionality in your applications, focusing not only on asynchronous compute but also on asynchronous IO, and how you can adapt existing old-style APIs to work with the new coolness.
	WCF one-day crash course WORKSHOP REF: M4 Richard Blewett WCF is the core communication library of .NET. It can solve many distributed systems requirements, from inter-operable web services, to server-to-server communication on the backbone, to inter-process communication on a single machine. Solid WCF services are built upon a clear understanding of both the good and bad bits of the library, allowing you to make informed choices when you assess features. This workshop introduces all of the core concepts in WCF and covers the major pain points that people experience when they build services: threading, serialisation, throttling, configuration and security.
	Designing and building ASP.NET MVC applications WORKSHOP REF: M5 Kevin Jones MVC as a style of web development has been around forever, but ASP.NET MVC only for a relatively short time. Creating your first MVC application is easy, but how do you ensure that the application is maintainable and extensible? How do you use the latest .NET tools and frameworks within MVC? How do you make sure the application is testable? How do you use routes and route constraints? What external tools are there to help you test and debug the application? How do you manage database access from within an MVC application? What’s the difference between a model and a view model? During the day we will start from scratch and build a testable ASP.NET MVC application. The modules will cover MVC; Testing; Using IoC to create a more testable application; Entity Framework 4 and the Repository pattern. At the end of the day you will come away with a solid understanding of how to use various patterns and techniques to create a working ASP.NET MVC application.
	A day of jQuery and jQuery Mobile WORKSHOP REF: M6 Brock Allen As more and more software development moves to the browser, developers have to face up to the reality of JavaScript. Fortunately with libraries like jQuery programming in in the browser does not have to be hard. This day-long pre-conference session assumes no background in JavaScript or jQuery, and by the end of the day will have you happily coding in the browser. We will cover the bare necessities of JavaScript then move into the basics of jQuery and how it provides a wonderful abstraction for the browser DOM programming model. You will learn how to query the DOM, manipulate DOM elements, create and destroy elements and handle events. We’ll also look at using Ajax to communicate to the server, and we’ll conclude with an introduction to jQuery Mobile for building websites for mobile devices.
	SharePoint 2013 workshop for developers WORKSHOP REF: M7 Sahil Malik Join us for a full day of SharePoint 2013 goodness. SharePoint 2013 has some remarkable improvements as compared to SharePoint 2010. This day covers what you need to know about SharePoint 2013 as a SharePoint 2010 or 2007 developer. It also covers what you need to know as an ASP.NET developer to get a quick on-ramp to SharePoint 2013. Overall we’ll aim to provide a comprehensive overview of what’s new in SharePoint 2013 in various areas, including apps, client-side technologies, security, BCS, workflows, WCM and internet facing sites, mobile development, search, and Business Intelligence.
	LINQ and the Entity Framework WORKSHOP REF: M8 K. Scott Allen LINQ changes how we build data access components with .NET, and also introduces new flexibility and expressiveness Into the C# language. In this all-day session we’ll see how LINQ works at a language level, and also how to use LINQ with a focus on the Entity Framework. We’ll look at the trade-offs to evaluate when building a data access layer with LINQ, and use new features of the Entity Framework 5, including database migrations with EF.
	Writing SQL Server database applications and stored procedures for best performance WORKSHOP REF: M9 Bob Beauchemin In a database-centric application, whether the application performs well is usually highly dependent on whether the database code performs well. At the same time, we’re moving from traditional data access techniques like ODBC and ADO.NET to database code generation and object-relational mapping layers such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework. This gives application developers a choice of putting database code in stored procedures, using SQL code in applications, or using LINQ and having your SQL generated for you. In this one-day seminar I’m going to cover how knowing how the SQL query processor, plan caching, and parameter processing works can vastly change your application’s database performance. You have control of this performance no matter how you choose to access SQL Server, and we’ll cover performance issues both inside and outside the server.

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