April 2008 - Posts
Last week was the (now) semi-annual TechEd Israel conference. This was my sixth time participating in this event - I have given presentations at all six TechEds here. The conference is an amazing experience and has come a long way from 2000/2001 when we had to lobby Microsoft Israel to put on such an event. There were about 3,500 participants - about half the amount of TechEd EMEA for all of Europe!
The attendees enjoyed most of the sessions/speakers and the speakers enjoyed the interactions and challenges of the attendees.
A particularly interesting observation for me was when I asked the attendees at my session (Sync Services for ADO.NET) how many of them were VB developers. At VSLive last month I got about 80% VB developers. Here I got only one (1) !! and even he was only after I promised SWAG to anyone who admitted to it. Wow...
An extra treat for me personally was getting/seeing some of my Redmond friends to come over for the conference, including Pablo Castro, Matt Winkler, Lisa Feigenbaum, and Shy Cohen. The attendees really enjoyed their great sessions as well. An extra thanks to Matt, for staying in Israel an extra day to be the guest speaker at a special joint VB/C#/Architects User Group meeting.
I recently (OK, 10 days ago) returned from my annual pilgrimage to San Francisco, to speak at the main VSLive conference. My presentations this year are described here.
I'd like to share with you two observations / surprises from this conference:
(1) It is well known that I am a pretty big fan of DataSets - but I realize that it is not necessarily the most popular position to take. At VSLive, I gave 2 sessions on DataSets (Intermediate and Advanced). Image my surprise (if not shock and horror) when I realized that there were at least 2 or 3 other sessions covering much of the same content on DataSets. Could DataSets be making a comeback...?
(2) In one of my DataSet sessions, I asked the audience how many of them were developing with VB vs. C#. While one would expect a high percentage of VB developers in a data-centric session, I was still surprised that the audience was easily at least 80% VB developers. Could VB be making a comeback...?
Note the special date of April’s meeting and the special registration requirements.
This month’s meeting will be a joint meeting for IVBUG, IVCUG, and .NET Architects User Groups, so that we can all take advantage of a special guest speaker – Matthew Winkler from Microosft Corp (Remond). Matt is a Workflow Foundation expert and will be sharing his expertise with these 2 sessions: WF+WCF IntegrationWCF and WF are like two siblings separated at birth. They are two powerful technologies, but until .NET 3.5, did not know about one another. We’ll talk about how and why these two technologies have come together, how to take advantage of both from your code, and walk through some basic patterns that highlight how these two technologies fit together. Creating Custom Composite ActivitiesOne of the benefits of WF is that it allows for the creation of new patterns of control flow, you don’t just have to use state machine and sequence. Working with customers, I’ve seen a lot of people do some pretty weird things to fit their process into a sequence. We’ll walk through the mechanisms required to build new types of control flows, and then implement a few. Do to the expected great demand and limited seating, you MUST register in advance for this event at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032374675&Culture=he-IL
See you there !!
The April meeting of the Israel Visual Basic User Group
http://www.renaissance.co.il/ivbug:
April 9, 2008
Location: Microsoft Israel2 Hapnina St,
Ra'anana(09) 7625-100Floor 0 , Dekel Room It is the new building across from Amdocs.Turn right at the first traffic circle, there is a new area for Microsoft parking on the left. 17:30 - 18:00 Assembly
18:00 - 19:00 “WF+WCF Integration” Matthew Winkler, Microsoft Corp.19:00 - 19:15 Break19:15 - 20:15 “Creating Custom Composite ActivitiesMatthew Winkler, Microsoft Corp.
Well, spring is in the air, which for me means, among other things the renewal time for my Microsoft MVP award. I am proud to say that once again this year I have proven to be worthy of the award - thanks Microsoft !
Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend the MVP Summit in Redmond later this month :-( But at least I had the chance to talk with some of the VB PMs at the VSLive Conference this week.
My article on this topic just went live on MSDN at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc440724.aspx
Since both VS 2005 and VS 2008 were released before SQL Server 2008, most of the designers and tools don't work with SQL 2008. To address this, MS has released CTP updates and will be releasing final versions of these updates in the future. This article discusses the various issues and summarizes what featues will be made available in the various releases and where to download he current CTP updates.
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