Entries tagged with northeast - Channel 9

PDC09: Tour of Azure IT PAC

Jim O'Neil — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:09:00 GMT

One of the highlights of the Big Room floor at PDC 09 was an Azure IT PAC (Pre-assembled container), the unit of deployment within the Azure Data Centers. This particular model is the newest, Generation 4, and built to be deployed outside (versus the indoor models used in the Chicago and San Antonio facilities). The unit on the PDC floor was (of course) a prototype - it's 20 feet long versus the 40-foot standard, and has more glass for viewing than a real unit would have. Regardless, it really made the 'cloud' seem that much more concrete for me!

Northeast Roadshow: .NET Chips - Tidbits from the CLR and C#

Jim O'Neil — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:35:00 GMT

This installment of the Northeast Roadshow screencast series covers a number of core concepts in the CLR. Beginning with a discussion of the differences and nuances between reference and value types, the topics quickly move into concepts such as boxing, immutability, performance of String versus StringBuilder, constants versus readonly variables, and others. These are concepts every .NET developer should be familiar with to build effective code.

Northeast Roadshow: Taskbar Deep-dive

Jim O'Neil — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:49:00 GMT

In this episode, Developer Evangelist Jim O'Neil, walks through a example of updating a legacy MDI application to take advantage of most of the features of the Windows 7 taskbar all the while maintaining backwards compatibility to Vista and XP. You'll get a detailed look into using the managed code Windows API Code Pack to adapt your older applications to leverage jumplists, thumbnail previews, and thumbnail buttons.

Slides and source code for this session can be found at the Northeast corner of Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Data Quest

Jim O'Neil — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:10:00 GMT

Microsoft is all about options, and there's no shortage of options when it comes to data access! You've got ADO.NET DataSets and DataReaders, LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services just to name a few. Each of these technologies can be used - and abused - depending on the context, so this session is geared toward providing guidance on when and how to use (or not) the various options available to you.

You can find the slides and code samples for this session at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Light Up Your Apps With Windows 7

Jim O'Neil — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:06:00 GMT

Jim O'Neil concludes his three part series on Windows 7 for Developers with an overview of the new APIs that allows applications to take advantage of cool new features like libraries, jump lists and thumbnails on the taskbar, multi-touch, sensors, the Windows Ribbon, and native Web Service capabilities.

You can find the slides for this session at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Windows 7 Developer Productivity

Jim O'Neil — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:52:00 GMT

Jim O'Neil continues his three part series on Windows 7 for Developers by looking at a variety of features to enhance end-user and developer productivity. He shows how new features such as the window manager's "snap, shake, and peek", libraries, jumplists, federated search, DirectAccess, and HomeGroup make developing applications on Windows 7 easier, quicker, and more fun than ever!

You can find the slides for this session at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Windows 7 Application Compatibility

Jim O'Neil — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:46:00 GMT

In this first of a three part series on Windows 7 for Developers, Jim O'Neil discusses the guidance and tools available for smoothly migrating applications from Windows XP and Vista to Windows 7. Included in the discussion is the Windows 7 Application Quality Cookbook, Application Compatibility Toolkit, and the incredibly nifty Windows XP Mode.

You can find the slides for this session at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow – XNA Game Development

Brian Johnson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:55:00 GMT

Let’s talk games! In this screencast, Chris Bowen (http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen) tours the world of XNA, from the components of the XNA Framework, the XNA Creators Club Online, and resources for learning to create games. The bulk of the screencast focuses using XNA Game Studio, which can create games for Windows, XBOX 360, and Zune, to create a simple 2D game from scratch. Of course, it isn’t a fancy game (in the least), but you’ll soon have a working understanding of XNA. It’s up to you to take it from there to create the next smash hit!

Slides and code from the session are available on the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Top Things Developers Should Know About SQL Server - Execution Plans

Brian Johnson — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:08:00 GMT

Jim O’Neil, Developer Evangelist, closes out his five part series covering topics on SQL Server for developers with an overview of execution plan generation. Using SQL Server Management Studio it’s easy (and fun) to watch how queries are optimized and thereby get a better insight into application performance. The session covers how to read a query plan and offer some general guidelines on what characterizes an efficient query versus an inefficient one.

Northeast Roadshow - Top Things Developers Should Know About SQL Server - SQL Server Profiler

Brian Johnson — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:17:00 GMT

SQL Server Profiler is a tool every developer should have in their repertoire. With the use of frameworks and abstractions, we often lose sight of what is actually hitting the database, and there’s no better way to get that information than SQL Server Profiler. It has a few knobs and dials that we’ll cover here, and we’ll look at a sample scenario to ‘debug’ a faulty Entity Framework expression.

Northeast Roadshow - Top things developers should know about SQL Server - Error Handling

Brian Johnson — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:54:00 GMT

Jim O’Neil, Developer Evangelist, continues his five-part series on what developers should know about SQL Server. In this third segment, he takes a look at the components of a SQL Server error as well as some of their nuances and suggests techniques for handling errors on both the server-side in Transact-SQL and on the client-side in .NET code.

The complete slide deck for the series is available at Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Top things developers should know about SQL Server - Understanding SQL Injection

Brian Johnson — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:12:00 GMT

In this second of a series on what developers should know about SQL Server, Jim takes a brief look at SQL Injection attacks, how they occur and what types of things you can do (as well as things you shouldn’t do!) to eliminate your susceptibility to them. Also mentioned are a number of third-party applications and tools available to help with assessing the vulnerability of your site to SQL Injection and other attacks.

The complete slide deck for the series is available at Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Top things developers should know about SQL Server – Leveraging the SQL CLR

Brian Johnson — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:45:00 GMT

It’s rare that a developer doesn’t need some familiarity with the database his or her applications are targeting, so this session (divided in to five parts) provides a bit of insight into features of SQL Server 2008 (and 2005) that they should be aware of when building .NET applications. The series is a “top 5” countdown, and in this first segment, we talk about how to leverage the .NET CLR inside of SQL Server, including an introduction to the new data types in SQL Server 2008 (hierarchyid, geometry, and geography).

Complete slides and a SQL demo script are available at Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Exploring Internet Explorer 8

Brian Johnson — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:16:00 GMT

There are plenty of new things to talk about with Internet Explorer 8, and no time like the present since it’s officially released! In this screencast, we begin with a tour of the new consumer features from the relatively minor of tab groups and improved zooming through the major with tab process isolation, Accelerators, and WebSlices. Then, a brief but important look at standards and compatibility options every web developer should understand. Finally, there’s a look at new developer features including an in-depth look at the developer tools included with IE8 to help work with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Slides from the session are available on the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery.

Northeast Roadshow - Silverlight with WCF, WCF REST, and ADO.NET Data Services

Brian Johnson — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:40:00 GMT

Once the initial allure of the cool graphics and animation capabilities of Silverlight has passed, you’ll probably say to yourself, "Hey, my app needs data too!" Well, this session delivers on that – not once, not twice, but thrice! We’ll look at accessing remote data services from Silverlight using a standard SOAP-based WCF service, then graduate to creating and consuming a RESTful service via the WCF REST Starter Kit, and end by accessing an Entity Framework model fronted by an ADO.NET Data Service.

Fully functional demo code is available at Code Gallery for those of you that want to tinker with the application as you watch the screen cast.

Northeast Roadshow - Services in Workflow Foundation

Brian Johnson — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:52:00 GMT

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is the unsung hero of the .NET 3.0 release. With Workflow Foundation you can model business processes as sequential flows and state machines at a level of abstraction that brings both the developer and the business analyst in on the conversation.

After an initial overview of WF, this session uses a coffee shop metaphor to dive deeper into the use of local services (via the the CallExternalMethod and HandleExternalEvent activities) and external services (via the Send and Receive activities introduced in .NET 3.5).

You can find slides and samples from the Northeast Roadshow events at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery Site.

Northeast Roadshow - UX Options

Brian Johnson — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:50:00 GMT

There’s no shortage of choice when it comes to building applications on the Microsoft platform – traditional desktop application or browser-based application? Web Forms or Win Forms? AJAX or Silverlight? Rich versus reach?

This session covers the array of options and offers some insight into selecting the user experience delivery options that are best for your application’s target audience. Also included is a brief discussion of the software factories and other guidance provided by the patterns & practices team at Microsoft.

You can find slides and samples from the Northeast Roadshow events here at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery Site.

Northeast Roadshow - REST

Brian Johnson — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:43:00 GMT

REST (Representational State Transfer) is all the rage as a lightweight, web service architecture that relies on existing web standards such as HTTP and XML.

In this session, you’ll get insight into the roots of REST, including its four main tenets, and be able to critically discern how “RESTful” various external offerings are. Also covered are new features in .NET that align to RESTful approaches for data and service access including the WCF REST Starter Kit and ADO.NET Data Services.

You can find slides and samples from the Northeast Roadshow events at the Northeast Roadshow Code Gallery Site.

Northeast Roadshow - ASP.NET Dynamic Data

Brian Johnson — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:42:00 GMT

In this screencast, Jim O’Neil, Developer Evangelist, takes us on a tour of ASP.NET Dynamic Data, introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

Dynamic Data leverages LINQ to SQL and the ADO.Net Entity Framework to provide a scaffolding approach to quickly build a CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) enabled web site. Through customizable page and control templates that interact with the data model, you can build quick-and-dirty data entry sites or customized, branded extensions to existing sites (and anything in between!).

You can find the samples and slides from Jim's events here.