Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

Good news for those of you who miss the ASP.NET project-based model, as it was in VS 2003 (and removed in VS 2005).  It is making it's way back to VS 2005 and a preview version is already available.  Check it out in Scott Guthrie's blog entry

At the MS E-Learning site, you can pick one Upgrading from Visual Basic 6.0 or one ASP.NET module and access it for free for 90 days.  You can choose additional modules at a 30% discount.  .  They are all 3 hour online classes with virtual labs. This is a great way to get an easy quick start to developing with VS 2005.

HOWEVER, make sure you hurry, since the offer expires on January 4, 2006, so you must sign up by then.

On December 12, we had official Israel VS 2005 launch event in Tel Aviv.  It was a great, fun event, with over 1300 attendees !

I did 2 different presentations.  The first was one of the main sessions for the general assembly, entitles ".NET 2.0 Things you must know about".   I thought it would be interesting to try something different, so I asked Roy Osherove to join me in a fun-filled presentation, in the context of a "VB vs C#" debate (I was the VB guy :-) ).  

During the session we built a simple, but architecturally realistic application, and showed how many of the new features of .NET 2.0 and VS 2005 can/should be used in a real-world project.  The topics we covered included, generics, nullable types, ADO.NET, typed datasets and data-binding, debugging tools and visualizers, and the My objects.  The session went very well and Roy and I had great and fun interactions on stage - both scripted and ad-libbed.  Although I expected that doing such an interactive session with someone else would be more work than just preparing a session for myself, I didn't realize HOW much more preparation it would take.  Still, it was well worth it and Roy was a great partner for the session.

The slides and demos are available here.  We also had a REALLY big opening, but you'll have to wait until the pictures and videos are available online...

I'll take a short break on my intense preparations for the upcoming VS 2005 Launch event in Israel to quickly recap the annual VBUG conference in the UK.  It was a relatively small, but highly successful.  A bunch of great speakers and lots a great attendees.  In addition to the standard sessions, there was a special "Code Off" coding content, with 4 developers each developing a different type of UI (Winform, WebForm, Office, Mobile) to the same set of requirements and Web Services.  There was also a on site recording of the .NET Rocks show - which means that Carl and Richard were there as well.  I hads lots of fun hanging out with them and Mark Miller.  I also had some great discussion with the attendign developers between sessions and at the evening events.

Overall, the attendees reported having a great time.   I am proud to say that 2 of my 5 sessions were very highly rates, on difference scales.   "Data Access Strategies and Design Choices" was rated third best value to the conference and  "Data Access Techniques in ADO .NET 2.0 & Visual Studio 2005" was rated third highest average score.

Here are some other blog entries describing the event:

I am looking forward to next year...

This month I was able to arrange for a special speaker from Microsoft in Redmond.  Yair Alan Griver is the Group Manager for Visual Studio Data. As such, he works with all the teams responsible for data features across all programming languages and tools to drive a coherent story around data for developers.

In his first presentation, “yag” will present and discuss XML editing and debugging in Visual Studio 2005.   In his second presentation, he will give us a glimpse of the future with his discussion on Language INtegrated Query (LINQ). He’ll cover how LINQ can be used to query objects, databases and XML and talk about where it might be heading.

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.

NOTE: The presentations will be in English

See you there !!

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

December 7, 2005

Location:
Microsoft Israel
2 Hapnina St, Ra'anana
(09) 7625-100
Floor 0 , Dekel Room
It is the new building across from Amdocs.
After the first traffic circle, there is an area for parking on the right.

17:30 - 18:00   Assembly
18:00 - 18:10   Introduction
18:10 - 19:15    “XML editing and debugging in Visual Studio 2005"
               Yair Alan Griver, Microsoft  Corp.
19:15 - 19:30    Break
19:30 – 19:45   "Hatzilu !"
                        Open session, with questions and answers/ideas from everyone
19:45 - 20:45   “A look at data in the future - Language INtegrated Query (LINQ)"
                       Yair Alan Griver, Microsoft  Corp.

Please be sure to email me to confirm your participation or for more information.