Palermo4 : techfest

TechFest 2006 - Phoenix

Palermo4 — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:50:46 GMT

Today is a repeat of our TechFest event yesterday in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I had the closing session yesterday on WPF, and it was a lot of fun. How can you not have fun with WPF? It's eye-candy for the developer and end-user.

Today we have a slightly larger crowd for the developer track. Should be that much more fun :-)

TechFest 2006 Developer Track - SQL Server 2005

Palermo4 — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:54:17 GMT

Kathrine Lord presented on SQL Server 2005 from a developer's perspective.

SQL Server 2005 Surface Area Configuration may be the first place to go when installing SQL Server 2005 - since one of the things that can be managed here is enabling remote connections. The option for configuring features allows for turning on|off (or managing) items such as CLR integration, Database Mail, Native XML Web Services, and Service Broker (to name a few).
Begin Try, End Try - Begin Catch, End Catch support for exception handling (Finally clause not supported).
Under management option in SQL Server Management Studio, it is easy to filter Log data for viewing and troubleshooting.
Reporting available from SQL Server Management Studio for getting information about data such as disk usage, index info, and transaction data.
Synonyms allow for referencing complex qualified names with a simple name.
Integration Services projects within Visual Studio 2005 (screenshot below)

It was obvious to me that Kathrine is much more a DBA than a database developer. Considering this was a developer track, I felt there was too much admin discussion (although it was good info, just not the right context).

TechFest 2006 Developer Track - BizTalk 2006

Palermo4 — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:53:30 GMT

Dale Michalk, a Process Platform Architect with Microsoft, covered BizTalk Server, and the direction of it's integration story. Since I have never done anything with BizTalk before, I found it to be very informative. Here are some points of interest:

BizTalk 2006 offers more "adapters" out of the box for things such as Siebel, Oracle, POP3, SharePoint, PeopleSoft, and Mainframe Apps (to name a few).
Once BizTalk is installed on a developer's box, Visual Studio 2005 offers specific BizTalk project templates.
When defining schemas for BizTalk applications, Visual Studio 2005 allows for XSD creation through an easy treeview-like interface.
Mapping interface in Visual Studio 2005 for BizTalk supports "functoids" for transforming logic (which ultimately results in XSLT - and maybe .NET code).
Orchestrations allow for business process flow. In Visual Studio 2005, this is a workflow look-and-feel.
If an orchestration project references a schema project, messages can be "typed" according to the referenced schemas. It also allows referincing of .btm files (BizTalk Map files).
Port Configuration wizard in Visual Studio 2005 allows for specifying receiving and sending ports in process workflows.
To deploy, inside Visual Studio 2005, right-click solution and select Deploy Solution.
From MMC, go to BizTalk Server 2006 Administration, and for the deployed solution, select Configure Application for specifying specific details such as file paths.
Right-clicking an XSD in the schema project allows for creating an XML-instance of the schema for testing.

I was rushing to get all the bullet-points in above, as Dale was able to put together an end-to-end (fully functional) Biztalk 2006 solution in less than 25 minutes. He stressed how he was able to get it all done without a line of code (which was true).

TechFest 2006 Developer Track - CardSpace

Palermo4 — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:01:32 GMT

Jeet Jagasia spoke about CardSpace, which is part of the new .NET 3.0 Framework. Heer are some points I caught:

Protect users from phishing attacks
Self-Issued card data is stored locally
Managed card data is stored on provider's server
User maintains the identity meta-data for all cards belonging to him|her.

Ulitimately, this API will support easing the "identity" hassles of the internet or smart-client applicaitons.

TechFest 2006 Developer Track - Jeet Jagasia

Palermo4 — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:30:10 GMT

Jeet Jagasia with Microsoft is speaking on .NET 3.0 Framework technologies and ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX. That is alot to cover in just an hour. Here are some highlights:

ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX allows features such as AutoComplete, UpdatePanel, and Rich UI content.
.NET Framework 3.0 == .NET 2.0 + 4 new technologies (WCF, WPF, WF, WCS)
POX acronym stands for "Plain Old XML"
WCF endpoint == A)ddress B)inding C)ontract == A:where? B:how? C:what?
MTOM allows efficient binary transport. Enabling reliable messaging in config file enforces entire delivery
Workflow can be defined in code or in markup called XOML (Extensive or Extensible Object Markup Language)

TechFest 2006 - Santa Fe

Palermo4 — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 16:32:45 GMT

Today is the launch of TechFest - a new "one-to-many" approach created by Randy Rands with Microsoft. In his opening session, Randy highlighted the purpose of TechFest - to inform the technical community (infrastructure or development) what to think about moving forward with current or new projects. Randy quoted Gretzky (and I am going to paraphrase this) in that the "Great One" was great by going to where the puck was going to be, not where it was. Likewise, we should be observant as to where technology is going to be. That is the spirit of TechFest. Today is the first instance (geek speak) of TechFest, which will be followed by a repeat tomorrow in Phoenix, AZ. I am closing the developer track today showcasing WPF technologies.