Monthly Archives: March 2005

Visual Studio Connections: C# for VB programmers

Presentations

I have posted the powerpoint for the C# for VB Programmers session that I gave at Visual Studio Connections earlier this week. They are located on this page: www.thedatafarm.com/talks.aspx.

The disclaimer I gave at the start of this talk is that I am a VB programmer mostly, and not a C# programmer. The presentation is to help VB programmers with some of the very common mistakes that we make when working in C#. I am in no way a C# expert. In fact, one person who attended this talk, while marking that my “knowledge of the topic” was not “excellent” on the eval, did comment that my lack of expertise in C# actually made the presentation more useful. Spot on, baby! 🙂



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more on casey and msdn online

Just Rambling

(writing in lower case in honor of my subject: casey).

casey has a fun post which a list of pros, cons and moots about writing for msdn online.

out of his, i will pick one from each category that i agree or disagree with

pro: getting paid (no brainer)

con: waiting for the article to go live. as you may have noticed, i have nothing on msdn online, though i *have* actually written three articles and am working on a 4th. Though, heck, that’s nothing compared to print!

moot: he lists the due diligence paperwork as moot. eliot, did you hear that? hahahaha. I’d definitely put the paperwork in the con list! though, since the paperwork makes getting paid possible, perhaps that’s how it balances out to a moot for casey. 🙂

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C++ turns 20

Just Rambling

And why do I, a person who can do no more with  C++ than spell it, care? Because if I’m lucky, Kate will be speaking at C++ Connections which is part of the DevConnections conference in the fall. I’m speaking at the VS Connections and ASP.NET Connections shows.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Yo! Don’t you want to lead a Birds of a Feather at TechEd?

Community Cheerleading

I’ve been perusing the awesome list of BOFs submitted, but there is something that is nagging me about it. I think of the BOFs as a way for community people who don’t normally get the opportunity to present at conferences (or who may not want to present!) a chance to lead a discussion about a topic near and dear to their hearts. So far, most of the submissions are from a lot of Microsoft people and some rock stars from the community.

But this does not mean that you need to be a ‘Softie or a well-known .NET person or an MVP or anything special to submit a BOF. Don’t be shy! Step up to the plate! The submission deadline ends in a few more weeks! That seems a little early, but it is tied into TechEd’s planning schedule.

Remember that the BOFs are not presentations and there will be no projectors. It is just a planned discussion and whoever submits it merely leads the discussion.

The BOF site is hosted by TechEd, but the whole BOF organization is being run by INETA (thanksk to the great efforts of Stuart Celarier) and Culminis.

http://www.AcehAid.org

ADO.NET 2 and SQL Server 2005 Integration (and MARS too)

ADO.NET 2

I am starting to realize that this tighter integration of ADO.NET and SQL Server means that I am going to have to get much more knowledgeable about SQL Server. I have been (to coin a great book title) a “reluctant DBA” for a long long time. But now that we can do things like BulkCopy in ADO.NET 2.0, something I have NEVER done in SQL and know nothing about, I am in danger of crossing lines that I don’t know even exist. I had a long talk about this with Gert Drapers while I was at DevConnections. Just with the Bulk Copy alone, I have to be mindful of record locking etc etc. I would never have known that and created problems by misusing the bulk copy class in ADO.NET 2.0.

Gert also told me something that made me happy happy happy. As I have been learning and teaching about ADO.NET 2.0, I find myself having to list (or point to) many caveats with MARS since it is on by default. I have wished it would be off by default and Gert tells me that by RTM it will be. That is a good thing. Here is a great MARS FAQ post by Angel Saenz-Badillos of the ADO.NET team.



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new VBInk tablet developer website

Tablet

(by way of Loren Heiny)

VBInk (with links, a blog and forums) – focuses on doing tabletpc development with VB. I’m not sure if I personally think it’s necessary to get so granular – since the concepts are all the same, but it does make it easier if you are more experienced in VB and want to focus on what you are learning in the Tablet SDK. I know that when I first did the Hands on Labs and they were in C# (now there are VB versions), I actually thought that the delegate I set up to create an event handler for one of the ink events was (gulp) part of the tablet API code! (I know better now 😉 – but that’s what happens when you pile learning curves one on top of another…)

A little digging around (why was this necessary?) points all of this back to Stein & Associates and there are real people’s names on that site: Dan and Kimberley. It would be nice if they were a little more transparent on the VBInk site so we know who it is that is actually doing this site. That’s the whole point of having community… so that we can have personal relationships with each other. (hint hint :-))

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ASP.NET Connections: Web Services Security for Dummies with WSE2.0

WSE

For those that attended my afternoon workshop at ASP.NET Connections on Sunday, thanks so much for coming. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy teaching that particular session and I hope everyone got a lot out of it. I know from talking to a bunch of you that you did!!

I have posted the powerpoint for this 3 hour talk on my website on the presentations page. It isn’t much different than what you have in the printed book. Look for the ppt link under the session entitled “Web Services Security for Dummies with WSE2”.

I will post the code from the demos shortly. [update: these have been posted on 3/26]



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