Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

For those of you you have yearned for the precise language specification for VB, it is available here.

This is a complete language specification, including both both BNF and textual descriptions.

The new, and vastly improved, Windows Forms data binding support in VS 2005 is one of my favorite features.  There is a good document, Visual Studio 2005 Windows Forms DataBinding FAQ, to answer some of the most common questions regarding the details of this infrastructure. 

If you prefer to start with a higher-level view of building data-bound WinForms applications, you may want to check out my MSDN article New DataSet Features in Visual Studio 2005.

For those of you who may not have the time or inclination to go through all 700 pages of the guide I mentioned in my last post, you want to start with this short article:

Preparing Your Visual Basic 6.0 Applications for the Upgrade to Visual Basic 2005

The MS Patterns and Practices team has come out with 2 new extensive resources on Migrating VB6 applications to VB.NET. 

The first is a  massive (over 700 page) Migration Guide, which was developed in conjunction with outside industry experts (eg. I worked primarily on the Data Access chapter, in addition to a few others). 

The second is the VB Migration Assessment tool, which will analyze your VB6 projects and present  you with a lot of metrics, including estimates of effort (time) and costs.

They can both be downloaded from here.    I'd love to hear any of your feedback on either of these resources.

If you are new to writing SQL queries and what to get an understanding of the fundamentals, then check out my new MSDN article Writing SQL Queries: Let's Start with the Basics

MSDN just published a four-part massive (107 pages total) FAQ paper on generics by Juval Lowy:

·         Fundamentals

·         .NET Framework

·         Tool Support

·         Best Practices

All code samples are in C#, VB and MC++ and were hand-written specifically for that specific language (not mere translation).

Check out this thought-provoking session transcript of a talk given recently in NYC by the father of Windows programming - Charles Petzold.

Later this month, VBUG, a leading developer group is having it annual Winter Conference at the Microsoft campus in Reading, UK.  I've been invited as a special guest speaker and will be giving 5 different presentations on the course of the 2-day conference and 1-day pre-conference event. 

In addition to a pre-con keynote session on "Why .NET ?", I'll also be giving sessions on new data access technologies, designing data access components, ADO.NET 2.0, VB6 to VB.NET Migration, and SQL Express.  The full conference agenda is here.

Happy Birthday to us – we are 8 years old now !!!

As hard as it may be to believe, it is time for another IVBUG Birthday Party !

Please join us for some special treats (and 2 special presentations) to celebrate the completion of our 8^th year of monthly meetings.

This month we will have 2 speakers from Microsoft Israel.  The first speaker is Ronen Ashkenazi, the (relatively) new CTO and Specialist Team Unit Manager.  Ronen's session will be "Microsoft in the Enterprise – Vision and Roadmap" where he will cover an overview of the Microsoft core initiatives and product roadmap drivers including the MS roadmap for the coming years.  The second session, given by Yaron Fraiman of Microsoft Israel, will be "Line of Business connectivity Solutions" and will discuss solutions for accessing ERP and Line of Business data using the Microsoft Office suite of tools.

As always, we'll have our special "Hatzilu" session at our meeting. So please come prepared to discuss your most frustrating problems (or at least some of them!) and to share some of your own techniques and solutions that you have found useful in your applications.

Please remember that it is important for me to know as accurately as possible how many people will be attending each meeting, so that I can arrange for the right amount of food.  Please confirm your attendance.

See you there !!

The November meeting of the Israel Visual Basic User Group
http://www.renaissance.co.il/ivbug:

November 2, 2005

Location:

Microsoft Israel

2 Hapnina St,
Ra'anana

(09) 7625-100

Floor 0 , Dekel Room

It is the new building across from Amdocs.