All posts by Julie

Entity Framework is …. complex

Data Access

On Friday, I did a full day workshop on Entity Framework called Entity Framework 0-60. Well, I translated it into the local measurement and renamed it 0-100 (km).

One of the comments I got back from an attendee was:

“It was a great overview on a really interesting topic. It was a bit more complex than I expected so it was good to get the expert’s view”

“A bit more complex.” This is definitely one of the things that makes EF so difficult to teach or to write about. Even in 6 hours there’s so much that I have to glaze over. I tried not to linger in introductory information which they can get more easily elsewhere and spent more time teaching some of the things that are not so obvious and harder to grasp. The last 45 minutes was free form as I invited them to pick my brain and take advantage of all that I have learned so far. I plan to do that again in upcoming workshops.

I think one of the critical things I shared with them during the day was something that is also common to any LINQ queries, which is that you can very easily and unknowingly make trips to the database when you think you are just looking at only the cached objects. When I first mentioned this, the room went silent and their eyes got very big, so I realized that I better spend a little more time exploring this than I had planned.

I’m doing this workshop again this coming Sunday at DevConnections in Orlando (still seats available!) and I expect the day to transpire very differently than it did in Sweden this past Friday. I even completely reorganized the slides on my way home from Sweden because I learned a lot from the questions and reactions of Friday’s attendees.

Yes, Entity Framework is complex. And, as the day progressed, I surprised myself with how much I have really learned about this technology. And I seem to have a Rolodex in my head with listings of forums threads and blog posts that I frequently referred to which was very handy.

Vermont IT Jobs:Director, IT Business Systems Team in Brattleboro Vermont

Jobs

Director, IT Business Systems Team – Information Technology
Reports to:            Vice President for Information Technology
Location:               Brattleboro, VT 
 
 
General Description: 
The senior member of the IT Business Systems Team, the Director, IT Business
Systems Team is responsible for working with the CIO to set the vision for the
Application Development for the organizations Information Technology. This individual
has demonstrated the ability to analyze and implement business solution using various
application development technologies.
 
Primary Responsibilities:
•         Working with CIO and IT Senior Management team to lead short term and long
term planning for the IT organization
•         Interview, gather, analyze, and produce business requirements based upon
business need within the organization
•         Leads efforts with IT and Business Management to determine best solution
•         Leads IT team members to design, analyze, code, test, implement and
document solutions for business problems
•         Ability to transition IT organization to new application development technologies
•        Maintains and enhances IT solutions for business areas
•         Work with outside vendors to provide support for the organizations Application environment
•         Recruit, lead, coach, and mentor members of the Business System team
•         Perform Project Management functions for the Application Development projects
•         Stay current with major trends and information technology approaches and tools
•         Make recommendation to business area to improve business processes
 
Required Qualifications:
•         BA in related field or equivalent experience.
•         At least 8 – 9 years experience in a similar position.
•         Proven success designing and/or selecting, and implementing application
solutions in a global environment
•         Ability to collaborate with heads of program units to understand their challenges
and implement technology solutions 
•         Knowledge and experience with Microsoft SQL, Business Objects (Crystal
Reports), Coldfusion, and Microsoft  Access.
•         Microsoft .Net experience or demonstrated proficiency in object oriented
languages
•         Understanding and proficiency in building web based applications
•         Ability to demonstrate strong skills in information needs analysis, requirements
creation, development and testing in a Windows environment.
•         Experience working with central corporate MIS systems.
•         Strong organizational skills and excellent attention to detail.
•         Strong interpersonal skills with excellent patience, clarity of communications
and commitment to team approaches, strong leadership and negotiation skills.
 
Desired Qualifications:
•         Relevant experience working in a not-for-profit, educational or international
organization.
•         Knowledge and experience with Windows operating systems and Windows
based programming languages
•         Experience supporting Datatel.
 
Skills:
•         Demonstrated Leadership capability (ability to motivate others to achieve
organization’s goals)
•         Strong Organizational skills and strong goal orientation
•         Strong Analytical Thinking (ability to identify and respond to complex situations)
•         Good Oral Communication (ability to convey and absorb information through
spoken words)
•         Good Written Communication (ability to write clearly and to understand written communications)
•         Strong Teamwork capability (capability to work with others in order to achieve a
common goal)

Contact:
Benjamin J. Scribner
Executive Recruiter
Gallagher Flynn & Company, LLP
(802) 651-7278
bscribner@gfc.com

 

Entity Framework & ADO.NET Data Services to Ship with VS 2008 SP1 & .NET 3.5 SP1

Data Access

These things tend to happen when I’m travelling and don’t check my feeds for an entire day. I can’t say this is a huge surprise since it’s very sensible. I’m happy to finally have some tangible news from the team. I’ll be happy to share this news in my Entity Framework workshop tomorrow! During the conference I actually had someone suggest that they still didn’t believe that EF wouldn’t go the way of Object Spaces. Sheesh!

Entity Framework & ADO.NET Data Services to Ship with VS 2008 SP1 & .NET 3.5 SP1

 
Wednesday, April 09, 2008, 7:02:00 PM | dpblogsGo to full article

It’s settled! The Entity Framework (and the Entity Designer) along with ADO.NET Data Services will RTM as part of the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 releases!

Unfortunately, we don’t have official release dates at this point, but stay tuned. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for the upcoming SP1 Beta 1, which will be your next chance to check out updated bits for both of these products.

Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability

The two deck presentation

Data Access

Doug Seven is one of the track chairs for the track that I’m speaking in at TechEd Developer. I was talking to him the other day about finding the line between the "Presentation Zen" type of presentation (where an extreme example would be a slide with nothing more than a smiley face on it) and a presentation that will be useful to attendees (or other downloaders) after the fact that has actual content on it as the presenter is no longer there to fill in the blanks.

He gave me a great suggestion – prepare two decks. take my typical "stand-alone" decks which is very dense, the make a copy of it and strip the copy down. Way down.

So many of the bullet points are things I’m talking about. Why should the attendees need to be destracted by so many details on the deck when I’m talking about them anyway?

But, and here’s what’s great about this idea – use the dense deck to share with attendees after the fact. All of the details that I talked about are now there right on the deck for their benefit.

I love this idea so much that I did it to my decks for the DevSummit. I have done one of my sessions already using the stripped down deck, then gave the stand-alone version of the deck to the track chair to put on the website.

I’m doing a silverlight talk this afternoon and cut the deck in half and on the remaining slides, removed a lot of content and replaced some of it with images instead. No smiley faces though.

I get to have my cake and eat it to and I think it’s a win-win for the attendees during and after the live session.