June 2005 Entries
In my opinion, NewsGator is the best RSS aggregator. It's integration with Outlook makes reading feeds ultra-convenient. If you haven’t tried NewsGator now’s the time because version 2.5 has been released. I’ve been using the beta and the integration with the NewsGator Web Edition is fantastic. Works as advertised. You might also want to try their podcasting application FeedStation. It’s not better than Doppler, yet. But I have a feeling it’s going to get there.
As you probably can tell I’ve been working on integrating Reporting Services within our ASP.Net website. A part of this integration is creating an ASP.Net custom control that will easily render a report from a page. Calling the Reporting Server web service is a snap and encapsulating this in a control is not a problem since I’ve had some experience with server controls (and yes they can be a big pain in the rear). I added a couple of LinkButtons to the control allow the user to export the report. But low and behold the Click events on the buttons...
Harden MS Reporting Services Using Custom ExtensionsHarden MS Reporting Services Using Custom Extensions, Part 2SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Deployment GuideHitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting ServicesTutorial: Adding Conditional Formatting into Reporting ServicesChris Hays's Reporting Services Sleazy Hacks WeblogReport-enable Your Web Apps with Microsoft Reporting ServicesSQL Reporting Services Tree Navigation Sample using a Web Service API Using Forms Authentication in Reporting ServicesBrian Welcker's Blog, Group Program Manager for SQL Server Reporting ServicesTeo Lachev's Blog, Reporting Services Consultant and AuthorHow to create a sample application that uses the Reporting Services SOAP APIs to render a report to a selected file...
I found a good article on the new version of Reporting Services. According to Welcker, "Everything will be upgrade-in-place for Report Server. Reporting Services 2000 reports can be run on 2005 though there won't be support for any features that are new in 2005. Reports will be automatically upgraded if opened in the 2005 Report Designer." Just what I wanted to know.
I caught Ron Howard's cabana talk on Community Server. There's a lot of cool new stuff that they've got planned. I got the feeling that they've got more features than devs/time. But it's good to know that they've got their pulse on the community and are listening. You hear that DotNetNuke community? Telligent is listening!
I had lunch with a couple of people who spent their evenings going to clubs and parties till two or three in the morning. How in the heck can you go to all of the sessions and have enough energy to go clubbing? I wonder...
Speaker: Mark Rideout Deployment with Click-Once You can run an application by clicking on a URL. Update an application by updating a server. Robust Downloader & Installer. File & HTTP server support. Start Menu & Add/Remove Programs integration Only the previous two versions are kept in cache. I wonder if this can be changed. Click-Once requires IE. With the bootstrapper you can deploy the .Net framework and SQL Express. Admin privileges are required. He shows the My namespace. We've all heard it before. Wait. Now we really hear it. He's playing a sound (that's a...
Speaker: Andres Sanabria This guy just opened the IDE and didn't resize his font size. I hate this! How am I supposed to follow along when all I see is red, blue and black blurs? Composite Controls combines the functionality of one or more existing controls The associated designer ensures child controls are created at design time as well. Script OM: New Features DefaultButton Maintain scroll position on Postback Focus, SetFocusOnError (for validation) Web Resources Out-of-band callbacks Script OM: Generate and render client-script Valid XHTML <script> tags Provides API to register inline script...
Speaker: Jeff King
What is good UI? Not just visually appealing. It's consistent, accessible, standards compliant. It has modular/interchangeable styles. It's also time efficient.
Master Pages
Factor redundancies into reusable templates
Inheritance concept baked-in architecturally
Has unlimited nesting
The Content's page Content control ContentPlaceHolderID property and the Master's ContentPlaceHolderID ID property must match.
You can dynamically switch the master page dynamically in the PreInit event.
This guy is typing the server code in the markup page instead of in the code behind. I really don't like that. I think the code-behind model is great! It offers a logical division between the markup...
I'm noticing that a lot of the women here are in the DB and BI world. Interesting.
Along those lines this conference is dominated by white males. How much so? Think along the lines of how the NBA is dominated by black males. I've only heard Spanish spoken once by a attendee.
I've now seen Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 crash three times during the conference. Crashy, Crashy.
Microsoft has announced the Microsoft Certified Architect program. But this isn't a take four test and your certified program. This is a certification with a peer board review process. Microsoft is allowing...
Speaker: Kimberly Tripp SQL Server stared from a team of five (Sybase) to 400 (for 7.0) to over 1,000 (for 2005). Geez, do you think that they've put some money into this thing? Query Analyzer and SQL Enterprise Manager are now lumped in to SQL Management Studio Analysis Manager turns into BI Developer Studio Profiler can now be run outside of the admin role. You can manage SQL Sever 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Express from the SQL Management Studio. Source Safe (anything that uses the Windows Source Control API) integration is included into SQL Management...
Speaker: Rob Howard You can now change settings in Web.Config dynamically. This should allow devs to store configuration changes on-the-fly. Declarative Data Binding Controls bounds at appropriate time Wire-up done through properties Page lifecycle knowledge not required. Site Map allows the defining of how the ASP.Net website pages are laid out. The SQLDataSource is a server control that allows the defining of a SQL Sever Data Source without any code. The SQL DataSource control enables caching on the object. Parameters of a SQLDataSource control can be bound. These parameters can be from the...
Last night another piece that I worked on was dropped, on a released night. I'm still not pleased; God is still in control; Film at 11.
I took the 70-305 VB web exam this morning and I passed. Barley, but passed. I scored a 715 and I needed a 700. Not bad for two nights worth of studying. I'm really pleased. Really, really pleased. Of course I should of passed since I've been working with the product for almost three years.
Bringing a second battery to TechEd was the smartest thing that I could of done.
The schwag is piling...
Speaker: Bill English
SharePoint Portal Server is a product. Windows SharePoint Sevices is a service.
Portal Sever gives us the ability to do three things: aggregates, organizes, and presents information. SharePoint Sevices are used for collaboration.
Areas appear in the portal and are used to aggregates, organizes, and presents information.
Site Collections Sites and Workspaces are used to:
Provide a collaboration space for users
Provide a development environment for new applications.
SharePoint Portal Server assumes a distributed administrative architecture
End-users will now manage most of the information in your company. Before you give a portal to a group of users, ensure they...
Speaker: Amanda Silver
VB now has a bunch of new templates including a login form.
The new Application Designer is the "cockpit for your app".
Ouch! She had to change her laptop two minutes before the session and of course the project isn't working.
You can override My namespace methods. You also need to use compiler arguments.
The My object are shortcuts to common objects.
Configuration Settings
Framework classes support read/write
Strongly-typed validation for settings
Discovery via IntelliSense
Support for app-scoped or user-scoped
Works in partial trust
User settings are stored in a username.config file.
Settings fire events.
Over 500 code snippets...
This talk focused all on demos.
Team System will incorporate a code coverage tool.
In the code coverage tool you can drill down to the module level.
It also shows which lines of code in the application have or have not been tested. It shows this information by highlighting the lines of code in different colors.
Testing code will still have to be written by hand. The real question now is how to get my team to write the code??
Writing a rule for the static code analysis tool (FXCop) is hard. They say that it's a couple of days type...
I didn't have any notes on this one…so shoot me. Essentially, three members of the Visual Studio Team System team talked about Team System and its features. One feature of note was shelving. Shelving occurs when a developer wants to place an unfinished piece(s) of code into source control. Since the code is unfinished it is undesirable to place the code in the main source code control system since it will probably break the build. The developer can "shelve" the code outside of the main source code control so the code is safe and the build remains unaffected. Nice.
Speaker: Joel Pobar
New features include: serial port, compression, strongly typed resources
Improved features include: console support, threading, diagnostics, networking.
New console features are color, positioning, and beep. BEEP!
Showed a really cool demo of a space invaders type console game. Available on GotDotNet.com
Networking support
FTP Protocol support
Automatic proxy discovery: Integrated with IE
HTTP requesting caching: integrated w/ the IE cache
HTTP Listener: Receive HTTP requests inside your application
Network information: Enumerate cards on the machine, get notified when things change.
The ? Operator in C# acts like the VB IIF statement
String s = (x -- null) ? 'true'...
All day yesterday I couldn’t connect to the internet. I couldn't even turn on my wireless card. This morning I talked to Hugo one of our network guys and he helped me reset the machine. All is working again. Thanks, Hugo! I just found out one of the pieces of code that I was working on was pulled last night from the build. I hate it when my stuff doesn't work right. HATE! I had to miss the today's keynote to fix my machine. That's ok. It should be up on the net right about…now. Geez! I miss...
Speaker: Amir Netz, Richard Tkachuk Analysis Services Proactive Caching Attempting to combine OLAP query performance Real Time data access (as needed) Hands off operation Automatic synchronization with the relational database No more explicit "cube processing"! Technically, caches all share very challenging problem: Coherency - maintaining consistency with the primary source of the data Low Latency - reflecting changes in the primary source in a small amount of time. Proactive Caching Challenges Efficiency How do we not drive the system insane with frequent updates How...
Speaker: Omar Khan VS 2005 Features Publish Web 508/WCAG Accessibility Checker Tools for creating multilingual Web sites Remote debugging WYSIWYG Dataset Designer IIS is no longer needed for web development VS now notifies you that if it needs to modify the web.config (say for debugging). Full intellisense in inline pages. The tt web site administration tool looks really nice. Very easy to use The obligatory master pages demo… ASP.Net will have themes and skins! Duh! It uses images css and .skin. This is a great feature and will be a bear to implement in...
Speaker: Vineet Rao CLR goes thought SQL OS for Memory, Threads/fibers, Synchronization SQL-CLR host co-ordinates Assembly Loading, Security Management, App domains, Escalation policy for exceptions Memory Management Most of CLR memory (GC Heap_ comes from multi-page memory allocator (outside Buffer-pol, from "MemToLeave"). Max server memory setting does not cover CLR memory Performance counters can be used within SQL-CRL SQL Server sets a pre-defined list of FX assemblies that can be referenced in users assemblies. The list is set by SQL server at the time of CLR initialization Certain restrictions apply ie.. cannot call...
· Michele Leroux Bustamante. She was really interested in our 1.1. to 2.0 migration. I talked to her a while about our business and our systems. Our home grown ASP.Net presentation manager might pose some problems during a migration. Could RSI be a candidate for a case study? · · · · · · · ·
Speaker: Billy Hollis, Rockford Lhotka
This session is being broadcasted over the web live. w00t.
Is it just me or does Billy Hollis look like a .Net version of Yoda. "Hmmmm. Smart Client? Build it for you I will."
Smart Clients UI has some level of detachment from the rest of the application
Key Decision Points
Do you control the user's operation environment?
Are you offline capabilities required?
Will a better UI translate to productivity gains and resultant savings?
Is it important for your application to access local resources on user machines?
Do you need (or would you benefit from) alternative...
Speaker: Jason Carlson, Brian Welcker
Report Builder for SQL Server 2005 will allow users to build their own reports (ad-hoc).
Driven from a business model of the data so users do not need to understand the underlying data structures. Exposes a meta data model.
Not a full analytical client or replacement for Pivot Tables.
Report Builder is a "Click Once" App
Requires .Net 2.0
Built on top of MS Office paradigms: Excel, PowerPoint.
Can build reports from templates.
This looks simplistic. How can you build complex queries? Or can you?
Headers can float with the report. If you scroll to the...
Speaker: Stefan Schackow
· Different virtual directories can run different versions of the ASP framework.
· Forms authentication cookies can be used between 1.1 and 2.0.
o 2.0 uses AES encryption by default
o To have this work change the machine Key in web.config. To do this explicitly set the validation key and machine key for 1.1. For 2.0 change the decryption attribute to "3DES".
o 2.0:
· New reserved directories:
o /app_code - for code
o /app_data - for data
o /app_themes - for skins
o /app_webreferences - for WSDL
o /app_localresources - for local page resources
o /app_globalresources - global resources
· ASP.Net has full XHTML compliance
o - Defaults to...
Ballmer "casually" shows off the new Thinkpad Tablet PC. He was like "Oh, what's this? The new IBM Tablet PC? I've been waiting for this one for a long time. I'm going to take this home." Exchange 2003 will have Push Email capability with SP2. Blackberry shutters. He brings up the "New World of Work". Huh? I don't want two worlds of work. There's a demo of a app called "Virtual Earth". Damn, if this doesn't look like NASA's World Wind. Ballmer calls out Rational by saying that Visual Studio 2005 will "Beat the hells outta them." Or...
I made the long flight from Miami to Orlando and now I’m sitting in the conference hall sippin’ some agua. This place is impressive. It’s really big, huge even. I’ll be posting some pics soon. The flight was fine although I’m not too happy about leaving Miami at 10 AM on a Sunday morning. When we landed I attempted to find the rental car’s pick-up van. After fifteen minutes I had to call them and ask where the damn van was. When then van arrived at the rental car agency I was greeted by a rude mumbling individual who was more...
Now don’t freak out when you see this. I know I’ve got three to four sessions in a time slot. There is a method to my TechEd madness. I have a theory about these types of technical conferences; if you aren’t getting anything out of a session, leave. Go to another one. Not all speakers can effectively present their material nor does their material always reflect the abstract. One session might be repeating the same information as a previous session. In these cases it’s in your best interest to attend something else. At TechEd I will be focusing on the...
TechEd is right around the corner and I still have no idea what sessions I’m going to. But luckily for me some people have posted their top sessions
GrokTalk schedule and map.CS at TechEd?Chris Williams: TechEd 2005 hit list.Scott Hanselman: My picks for TechEd 2005 sessions.Patrick Santry: DNN at TechEd.Carl Franklin: TechEd Time Again!!Paul Vick: Met with the VB Team at TechEd!
I’ll post my session picks before I leave for TechEd.Now Playing: Dakoda Motor Co. - Grey Clouds
Today, Microsoft announced that Office will have a new XML file format. This format will have an open schema so any developer can incorporate Office data into their applications. The new extensions will be DOCX for Word, XLSX for Excel and PPTX for PowerPoint. This marks a dramatic shift for Microsoft who always held their Office file formats close to the vest. Another interesting tidbit is that the new format will be one quarter the size of the current format. This is because the XML and other files will be placed in a zip container. The new XML format will be...