Rachel Appel Blog

CodeStock 2008: Have your mind blown!

2008-06-17T05:23:14.2742152-07:00

CodeStock 2008 Developer's Conference

CodeStock's mission is to bring the best and brightest code experts to East Tennessee for a one day conference open to all developers. This is not a trade show with slick salesman giving prepared demos - this is a gathering of real programmers learning about the latest in technology from each other. Sign up now to learn how you can join us for CodeStock 2008!

Speakers and Agenda

We have lined up 30 sessions, a keynote address by respected author and MVP Jeff Prosise, and a place to hang out with speakers and attendees in open spaces style. Check out the list of amazing sessions by awesome speakers. I will be speaking on ASP.NET Dynamic Data, catch it here.

Registration

Registration is open! You can register for CodeStock 2008 now, and reserve your seat at the greatest developer's conference Knoxville has ever seen!

Upcoming Developer Events

2008-06-17T05:19:00.721452-07:00

Tonight – June 17, 2008 Central-Penn.NET :

Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI), 470 Friendship Road, Harrisburg (3rd floor)

5:30 - 6:00: Content Management and Workflow with SharePoint (Andy Heller)
Microsoft Sharepoint is a platform for information. One core component that is gaining traction among users is content management and workflow. We will take a view at how content management and workflow in SharePoint can be relevant to the developer community.

6:00 - 6:30: Pizza and business meeting

6:30 - 7:30: SharePoint and Applications: Workflow Designer (Alejandro Rosado)
The Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides tools to automate business processes and build efficient applications on top of the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Specifically, we will look at the Workflow Designer and see how to create custom event notifications and other collaboration tasks.

7:30: Q/A and cleanup

I will be attending this meeting, see you then!

Tomorrow - June 18, 2008 .NET VALLEY:

Session 1 : 6:00 PM

What’s next for SBS?

Presented By: Michael J. Murphy

Tags: IT Professional | Small Business Server
Session Length: 60 minutes
Session Summary:
SBS 2003 is 5 years old. When can you expect SBS 2008? What should you know about the move to 64x only? What versions will be available? Have you heard about the mid-size server solution Windows Essential Business Server? What technology gap will this technology fill? How can I take advantage of it? If you want answers to these and other questions join us for a discussion of the upcoming release of SBS 2008 and EBS.

Session 2 : 7:15 PM

Providing Your LINQ to SQL

Presented By: Jason N. Gaylord

Tags: Application Development | LINQ | SQL
Session Length: 60 minutes
Session Summary:
One of the issues many developers have is generating a solid data layer for their applications. Microsoft realized this and developed LINQ (Language Integrated Query). LINQ can be used to provide the data layer for nearly anything including XML, Objects, and SQL Server. During this talk you'll see how to use LINQ to SQL, build Lambda expressions, and provide a complete data layer with doing very little work.

Speaking at Philly.NET Code Camp 2008.1

2008-05-15T18:10:50.784-07:00

It looks like this will be Philly.NET'sBIGGEST EVER code camp. Check out these stats, sent from Bill Wolff:

· 590+ registered, expect close to 450 attending
· 8 rooms like last time
· Park on the west or north side, north (back of building) is closest to the common and session rooms
· Attendees and speakers must register, all get a badge, speakers get a shirt (please wear it!)
· Several of the partners will have a table for the day, stop by and say hello
· There will be empty attendee bags and a few tables full of goodies
· Volunteers (see below) should start showing up at 7:30 to set up
· We have three high school kids for the day to handle food, trash, and heavy lifting
· The first session is at 8:30
· Lunch is earlier this time – 11:30, Primo Hoagies
· Afternoon snack are hot soft pretzels
· Closing and raffle happen at 4:50 in the common room
· Volunteers are always welcome to help clean up
· The speaker party immediately follows (5:30-7:30) at the Bent Elbow
· Evaluations will happen online this time using SharePoint, results will be posted in less than a week
· Attendees can win one of three Zunes by completing evaluations

My session is "An Intro to ASP.NET Dynamic Data". You'll get the basics of ASP.NET Dynamic Data in about an hour. You should be able to be up and building some apps w/it after sitting in the session.

Friday starts my Tour de' PA, when I leave for the Bloomsburg area then head over to Philly on Saturday then Harrisburg on Sunday. What a weekend it's going to be!

MSDN Developer Chat: Ask An Expert Live chat on May 1st

2008-04-30T15:10:49.413375-07:00

The Strong Coders Community will be hosting its Ask An Expert Live chat on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 6:00 PM Pacific Time and I've been invited to sit in on the expert panel.

Get your tough development questions answered by Microsoft MVPs, Regional Directors, and other industry experts. Community experts will be on hand to answer your .NET- and Visual Studio-related questions. No off topic questions please.

Please note that questions regarding upcoming products and future product specs might not be answered.

MSDN Online Chats - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx
Chat Room - http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/chatrooms/msdn.aspx
ICS - http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/08_0501_msdn_DEV.ics

Comic of the day

2008-04-23T14:19:05.740375-07:00

I just thought this was cute, geeky humor.

Image taken from here:

TECHbash 2008 is on May 10th 2008

2008-04-23T11:18:31.16225-07:00

Since its inception in 2005, TECHbash has evolved into the premier technology conference in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Join an estimated 300 Developers, IT Professionals, CIO’s and Industry Experts from Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and host-state, Pennsylvania. This one day event brings together a broad spectrum of Technology Professionals to network, knowledge share and discuss existing technology solutions to business challenges, as well as preview prerelease products on the bleeding edge.
This year, we expanded to three tracks offering more presentations and providing you with more content choices representing a greater breadth of Industry insight. We will open the event with a keynote presentation from the unstoppable juggernaut, Joe Stagner, Program Manager for Microsoft’s Web Tools and Platform Division.Attendees will have the opportunity to:

Enhance technical knowledge with comprehensive and relevant educational content
Build experience on current and soon-to-be released technologies and products
Engage with sponsors, presenters, and other technology professionals
Learn how to get involved with .NET Valley, Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Technology User Group
Leave with software and other swag

For more information and to register for the event, visit the TECHbash website at techbash.com

Get yourself on over to Ireland - DDD Day

2008-04-21T21:45:09.031-07:00

DDD Community Event. May 3, 2008. More at Plip's.

NEPA Developer Events - April 2008

2008-04-21T01:11:05.171625-07:00

.NET Valley Pre-Bash Party at Sidel's

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

If you've never been to a Pub Night before, you don't know what your missing. It's time to roll up the sleeves and dig in to some great food from Sidel's. We'll have Bruschetta, Fried Mozzarella, Antipasta, Tortellini salad, Mini-beef Wellington’s, and Shrimp. It all begins at 5:30pm. We have limited seating available so if you're sure you'll be there, register today!

WOOT!

Philly.NET Meeting

Wednesday April 23

Brian Donahue, Vitreo Solutions The Evolution of TDD

Test Driven Development has been gaining prominence, and many developers recognize the value it provides. Still, TDD adoption can be a slow and painful process, and often results in early abandonment as challenges mount. Many believe the current body of TDD knowledge puts too much emphasis on testing implementation details, and not enough on testing behavior. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) takes a more focused approach to TDD that can help clarify the testing process, and create a meaningful, readable suite of tests that not only helps you and other developers understand your application, but can be used to show your client that the application is meeting their needs. When developers, customers, and managers can clearly see the value of writing tests, everyone wins.

Book Review: ASP.NET Ajax in Action [5 Stars]

2008-04-05T16:59:02.67175-07:00

ASP.NET AJAX in Action by Assesandro Gallo, David Barkol and Rama Vavilala

Paperback: 600 pages
Publisher: Manning Publications (August 24, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933988142

This book gets 5 stars from me!

Review:

Whether you're a novice or you've already been writing ASP.NET Ajax apps for a while, you'll benefit from this book. At times the flow of multi-author books can be choppy, but not this book. ASP.NET Ajax in action reads like a novel de' geek the flow is so smooth. So much so in fact, that I am convinced that Allesandro, David and Rama are really all the same person. The topics in the book are placed in perfect order so anyone could follow them and the code examples in this book were clear, precise to the point and easy to follow, whether you were opening the downloadable solutions or just moving along step by step.

The beginning of the book covers the basics of JavaScript and the AJAX library, how they fit together with the overall Ajax architecture as well as Ajax patterns such as partial page updates and asynchronous network calls. This part of the book also discusses the ScriptManager component, its importance and how it interacts with the page, including the ever important page lifecycle - but not just the server lifecycle, the client page lifecycle is covered in depth.

The latter half of the book digs deep into the UpdatePanel control, giving us extended insights, best practices and great coverage of this frequently abused and misused control. The last part of the book covers advanced technical topics such as creating your own Ajax enabled controls, using the control toolkit, extenders, behaviors, animations and everything under the Ajax hood that you'll need as an ASP.NET Ajax developer. If you read this book you'll enhance your skills and expand your tools by tenfold. This latter section of the book also includes an intriguing segment on ASP.NET Ajax futures so we get a great look at the up and coming, soon to be hot new technologies like XML Script, Debugging and Drag & Drop Ajax style. While some of these futures may change between the publish date and the next release from Microsoft, you'll still be ahead of the game and pointed in the right direction, as the authors made sure to keep this notion in mind.

If Gallo, Barkol or Vavilala write more books, you can be sure I'll buy them.

Q&A and Resources from launch event

2008-04-04T10:39:40.812375-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came to the launch, especially those folks who stayed for the last session of the day when Lindsay and I presented. We were the last session in the afternoon and by then everyone is just darn tired after a full day of sessions and excitement!

Below I've compiled a list of some questions from attendees that I think were great questions worth sharing:

Question: What type of applications are best suited Sync Services

Answer: Here's some programs that would fit nicely - field service, CRM apps, anything for sales folks, trade show management & leads, or any desktop app where you do not or can not have constant connectivity.

Question: Is it really that easy to share your project with designers, even a desktop app using xaml?

Answer: Why yes it is! You saw the demo after all!

Question: Can you use Microsoft Access with Sync Services to create a local database cache?

Answer: No, you cannot.

Question: Is Sync Services available for file systems?

Answer: Yes (link below)

Question: Is it possible to add an amination to a xaml form in Visual Studio 2008 or must you use Expression Blend?

Answer: Yes, you can use VS2008 but I'll warn you - the storyboards are much easier w/Expression Blend, as you'd need to hand craft the XAML in VS08, there's no storyboard control. (see link below)

Resources:

Sync Services Whitepaper

Sync Services for File Systems

XAML for Storyboards

Microsoft MVP 2008

2008-04-02T06:07:04.343625-07:00

Yesterday I've received the MVP 2008 award for ASP.NET. Woot!

Heroes Happen Here - Philadelphia, Pa

2008-04-01T12:02:54.5096805-07:00

I will be presenting at the HHH event in Philadelphia, Pa on April 3rd, 2008 in the afternoon. The session title is "Defying Occasionally Connected Challenges with Smart Client Applications" and in this talk, I'll be discussing some of the hottest technologies available and below is the topic breakdown:

Designers & Developers:
See how using Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Expression Blend together to boost team productivity by using familiar tools and technologies on both sides of the web application.
Lighting up an MFC Application:
Upgrading legacy applications to work with Microsoft Windows Vista is a snap with new MFC controls that ship with Visual Studio 2008
Windows Communication Foundation & Workflow Foundation Integration:
Learn how you can benefit from Microsoft’s new communication and collaboration technologies as well as how you can integrate them to work together to create robust smart client apps
SQL Server & ADO.NET Sync Services:
Create applications that allow users to take data offline, where and when they want to, then synchronize and manage conflicts will little effort using the ADO.NET Sync service framework.