Jackie Goldstein's Weblog

Best Kept Secrets in .NET is the latest book by Deborah Kurata and covers some very practical, but often uverlooked or unknown, features of .NET.  I must admit that I have not yet gotten a copy of this book, but it is definitely at the top of my list and should be on yours as well.  I became a fan of Deborah's as soon as I read her first Doing Objects with VB book and have since developed both a professional and personal relationship with her. I have had many conversations with her and know her thoughts and approaches.  Her teaching style has already proven itself and speaks for itself.  Combine that with the topics covered in this book and I am sure that this is another "keeper"

Christa has posted one of her own articles on the MSDN Data Access and Storage Dev Center.  This is a neat and thorough article that takes you through using a ADO.NET DataSet as the source of data for SQL Server Reporting Services reports.  It explains and shows you what you need to know about implementing and using the simple data processing extension for SQL Server Reporting Services.

Eric Lippert, who works on the Visual Studio Tools for Office team at Microsoft, has a great blog entry showing how the error codes and descriptions for VB6 and VB Script go all the back to the original Altair BASIC  (Microsoft's first product) written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen back in 1975 for the Altair 8080.

This new article on MSDN is a long, comprehensive overview of Web Services and their various specs.

I think I have mentioned Pat Helland previously in my blog postings.  He's a good guy, who's been around and knows his stuff.  Check out his new paper on SOA: Data on the Outside vs. Data on the Inside.  It is very extensive, but organized and clear.

If you haven't signed up yet, make sure you register for next week's .NET on the Beach event in Herzeliya (Israel).  I can't promise you "Fun 'n Sun" since it is starting at 7:00 in the evening, but there will be lots of fun, networking, swimming and a look at future .NET and Visual Studio technologies.

It is good to be home again.  Even for a pretty heavy traveller like me, being away from Home for 3 full weeks is a long time.  Other than that, it was a good trip. A week in New York, visiting family and clients was good and productive (respectively).  After that, 2 full weeks in Seattle/Redmond was also great, albeit pretty intense.  Very long days of training/briefing sessions and lots of meetings.  I certainly learned alot - and may even have gotten a feature request incorporated into VS 2005!  I also found time to speak at the Seattle User Group on campus and to have a really fun Sunday afternoon at Paul Allen's Experience Music Project.

You can download the .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 here.