January 2012 Meeting Announcement

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The Windows 8 Developer Preview Safari

Microsoft’s Windows 8 is looking to completely shake up the computing industry, from handheld devices all the way up to the desktop. It includes a bevy of new features, including many security enhancements, and a completely new way for the end user to experience Windows. With the public release of a developer preview at Build last September, everyone’s been able to see firsthand what Microsoft has been working on. This presentation will take you on a trek through the new operating system, starting with significant high-level changes, continuing on into the internals of the OS, and finishing with examples of Metro-style applications.

Speaker
Paul Burns – Marathon Petroleum Company

Paul Burns is an IT Systems Integrator with Marathon Petroleum. He has been coding since 1993, as a hobby, and has experience with a wide range of programming languages, operating systems, networking technologies, and computer hardware. He has worked various tech jobs while attending college. He graduated from Ohio University in November 2009 with a BS in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics.

Pizza/Geek Dinner
Pizza will be provided as a snack during the meeting. For anyone interested in continuing the discussion a Geek Dinner will be held immediately after the meeting (Location – Waldo Peppers).

When
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Tuesday January 31, 2012

Where
Marathon Petroleum Company – Findlay, OH

November 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Test Driven Development: What You need to know but may be afraid to ask

Test Driven Development (TDD) has been one of the biggest and most compelling paradigm changes to software development of the past few years. The ability to bake quality into your application as you develop it can change the way you think about software; it effects the way we approach, design and write applications. Test Driven Development is powerful. Yet many developers allow themselves to be intimidated by what they perceive as added complexity. Managers worry that the practice of “test first” will delay development. This presentation will explain the concepts behind TDD, outline the benefits, give you some concrete examples and some advice on how to sell it to your managers.

Speaker
James Bender – Improving Enterprises

James is the Vice President of Technology at Improving Enterprises in Columbus, OH. James has been involved in software development and architecture for 16 years. He has worked as a developer and architect on everything from small, single-user applications to Enterprise-scale, multi-user systems. His specialties are .NET development and architecture, TDD, SOA, WCF, WF, cloud computing, and agile development methodologies. He is an experienced mentor and author. James is a Microsoft MVP. James book “Professional Test Driven Development with C#: Developing Real World Applications with TDD” was released in May of 2011.

Pizza/Geek Dinner
Pizza will be provided as a snack during the meeting. A Geek Dinner will be held immediately after the meeting (Location – Waldo Peppers).

When
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Tuesday November 29, 2011

Where
Marathon Petroleum Company – Findlay, OH

October 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Note: Meeting will be pushed back a week to Tuesday, Nov. 1st

Your Spark Razored my NHaml: A comparison of popular ASP.NET MVC View Engines

By now, if you’ve worked with ASP.NET MVC, you’ve worked with the default WebFormsViewEngine that may feel like a step back 10 years into Classic ASP 3.0. But there are other options available. ASP.NET MVC was designed to use other View Engines, allowing you to to keep the same Model and Controller while using code in your Views that doesn’t bring back scary memories of COM. Spark, Razor, and NHaml are all popular View Engines that have each made a statement in ASP.NET MVC circles. Let’s see what they are all about, how they compare, and how they stack up to the default engine.

Speaker
Jay Harris – Arana Software

Jay is a .NET developer, a software consultant, and is president of Arana Software (www.aranasoft.com). He has been developing on the web for over 15 years, since the Blink tag lured him away from VB3 back in 1995. With a career focus on end-user experience, he is a strong advocate of practices and processes that improve quality through code, ranging from automated testing, continuous integration, and performance analysis, to designing applications from the user’s perspective. Jay is also an active speaker and leader in the developer community, serving as President of Ann Arbor .NET Developers and is co-founder for the Lansing and the Indianapolis Give Camp.

Pizza/Geek Dinner
Pizza will be provided as a snack during the meeting. A Geek Dinner will be held immediately after the meeting (Location – Waldo Peppers).

When
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Tuesday November 1, 2011

Where
Marathon Petroleum Company – Findlay, OH

September 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Improving Software Quality with Continuous Integration,
and An Introduction to FluentMigrator

Continuous Integration is a set of processes that aim to improve the quality of software by applying quality control during development instead of the traditional model of testing after code is complete. In this presentation we will cover the various processes involved in implementing continuous integration, common obstacles developers face when implementing continuous integration and how to overcome them.

FluentMigrator is a database migration framework for .NET that allows you to write database migrations in C# using a Fluent Interface. FluentMigrator can update existing databases, create a specific version of the database as it was in some previous release or create a new database for automated testing.

Speaker
Chris Farrell – Quick Solutions

Chris Farrell is a Consultant and Mentor with the Solutions Project Group of Quick Solutions in Columbus, OH and has been developing with ASP.Net since 2002. In addition to on the job experience, Chris was also a key contributor for several years on the popular .Net open source RainbowPortal CMS. He is an avid supporter of ASP.Net MVC, Continuous Integration and Agile software development.

Pizza/Geek Dinner
Pizza will be provided as a snack during the meeting. A Geek Dinner will be held immediately after the meeting (Location – Waldo Peppers).

When
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Tuesday September 27, 2011

Where
Marathon Petroleum Company – Findlay, OH

Resources
Slides and the Fluent Migrator code demo. http://www.chrispfarrell.com/Blog/fanugSept2011

August 2011 Meeting Announcement

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The Pragmatic Windows Phone Developer!

Excited with all the buzz about Windows Phone Mango? Have an app idea; but tentative to start? Well, come on out and we shall talk everything that a practical Windows Phone Developer needs to know! We will start by looking at a couple of Windows Phone apps from start to finish, including discussions on best practices & Marketplace pitfalls. We also take a brief look at some of the upcoming features of Windows Phone Mango, and what they mean for the consumer & developer. We then mention some toolkits that could come handy & end the talk with discussions on data strategies. What is OData & why is it important for mobility. How can you leverage the cloud? All this & anything else that comes up in 2 hrs of Windows Phone love.

Speaker
Samidip Basu – Sogeti

Samidip Basu (@samidip) is a technologist & gadget-lover working as a Manager & Solutions Lead for Sogeti out of the Columbus Unit. Having worked on WP7 since CTP days, he now spends much of his time in spreading the word to discover the full potential of the Windows Phone platform & cloud-based mobile solutions in general. He passionately runs the Central Ohio Windows Phone User Group (http://cowpug.org) and can be found with at least a couple of hobbyist projects at any time. His spare times call for world travel and culinary adventures with the wife. Find out more at http://samidipbasu.com.

Pizza/Geek Dinner
Pizza will be provided as a snack during the meeting. A Geek Dinner will be held immediately after the meeting (Location TBD).

When
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Tuesday August 30, 2011

Where
Marathon Petroleum Company – Findlay, OH

Resources
Recap on “Pragmatic Windows Phone Developer” talk @ FANUG with list of Resources

July 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Going NoSQL with Raven DB

“Raven is an Open Source (with a commercial option) document database for the .NET/Windows platform. Raven offers a flexible data model design to fit the needs of real world systems. Raven stores schema-less JSON documents, allow you to define indexes using Linq queries and focus on low latency and high performance.”
- http://ravendb.net

Speaker
Nate King – Speedway

Pizza/Geek Dinner
Pizza will be provided as a snack during the meeting. A Geek Dinner will be held immediately after the meeting (Location TBD).

When
Tuesday July 26, 2011

Where
Marathon Petroleum Company – Findlay, OH

June 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Tuesday June 28, 2011

5 Ways That Postsharp Can SOLIDify Your Code

You understand the basics of AOP, and may know how to use PostSharp, but what it is good for? Your application might be full of cross-cutting concerns that are making your project difficult to keep under control. This session will take you through 5 real-world examples of aspects that will make your code more maintainable, easier to read, easier to write, and generally help adhere to SOLID principles. I’ll cover caching, logging, transaction management, dependency loading, and authorization, as well as some of the more advanced ingredients of writing good aspects.

Speaker
Matt Groves

Matthew D. Groves is a guy who loves to code. It doesn’t matter if it’s “enterprisey” C# apps, cool jQuery stuff, contributing to OSS, or rolling up his sleeves to dig into some PHP. He has been coding professionally ever since he wrote a QuickBASIC point-of-sale app for his parent’s pizza shop back in the 90s. He currently works from home on the Telligent Analytics product team, and loves spending time with his wife and 2 kids, watching the Cincinnati Reds, and getting involved in the developer community. He has a BS in Computer Science, an MBA, a PMP certification, and has experience in education, consulting, and product development.

May 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Tuesday May 31, 2011

5 Things you can do to be a bit more Agile (Lvl 100)

We all want to be more agile. We want a process that helps us deliver awesome code, but need to drag the rest of IT and the business along with us. How do you stop the nightmare of yesteryear, and sneak agile into your shop, right under the noses of the waterfall guardian trolls? We have five ways to be more agile without officially changing your process, or getting fired.

Speaker
Brian Prince

Expect Brian to get (in his own words) “super excited” whenever he talks about technology, especially cloud computing, patterns, and practices. That’s a good thing, given that his job is to help customers strategically leverage Microsoft technologies and take their architecture to new heights. Brian’s the co-founder of the non-profit organization CodeMash (www.codemash.org), runs the global Windows Azure Boot Camp program, and speaks at various regional and international events. Armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science and Physics from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, Brian is a zealous gamer with a special weakness for Fallout 3. Brian is the co-author of “Azure in Action”, published by Manning Press.

April 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Tuesday April 26, 2011

Introduction to Microsoft Workflow Foundation

Many applications require workflows to manage scenarios such as approval processes and complex business logic. Often these tasks can last for weeks and require status tracking, waiting for input from external persons and systems, and execution of parallel work. Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) assists developers in creating a workflow for an application by providing a library of common tasks, a framework to coordinate those tasks, and a graphical development environment. WF is built on top of the .Net framework and integrates seamlessly with SQL Server and with WCF. In this presentation, I will demonstrate the basics of WF, demonstrate how to create and call a workflow and the options for hosting a workflow. I will show how to use the task library and extend WF by creating your own tasks.

Speaker
David Giard

David Giard has been developing solutions using Microsoft technologies since 1993. He is a Microsoft MVP and an INETA mentor and the President of the Great Lakes Area .Net User Group. David has presented at many of the conferences and user groups around the Midwest. He is a recovering certification addict and holds an MCTS, MCSD, MCSE, and MCDBA, as well as a BS and an MBA. He is the host and producer of the mildly popular online TV show Technology and Friends. You can read his latest thoughts at www.DavidGiard.com. David lives in Michigan with his two teenage sons.

March 2011 Meeting Announcement

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Tuesday March 29, 2011

An Introduction to Visual Studio LightSwitch

Visual Studio LightSwitch, first released on August, 2010, is now in Beta 2 release. LightSwitch is a new tool enabling a user to quickly build data-driven applications like an order entry system. It is designed for non-programmers but allows customization and extension by developers. LightSwitch is a unique application development tool because it uses model centric design. By auto generating forms over data, a user can quickly create an application containing detail, search, and master detail screens. Because the application LightSwitch builds uses Silverlight, the application can be targeted for desktop, internet, or cloud deployment. In this presentation Dan will give an overview of LightSwitch and demonstrate features of LightSwitch for building a business application.

Speaker
Dan Moyer

Dan is a passionate software consultant with over 30 years of experience developing business and system solutions. Early in his career he developed communication drivers to interconnect point of sale and mainframe systems implementing packages for async, bisync, X.25, tcpip, NetBui, SNA and RPC/Sockets protocols. He has worked on a development team which developed one of the first large scale object oriented (C++) frameworks. The framework abstracted OS interfaces to allow business applications to run on OS/2, Windows 3.1, Windows NT and Unix. During the Dotcom boom, he worked on web technologies and site performance and scalability for an ecommerce application. Following the Dotcom bust, Dan joined Microsoft to work in a distributed development team responsible for delivering a business framework. Today he works as a consultant, using his experience of many past projects to deliver quality solutions. His passion is learning and staying current with the latest DotNet technologies, particularly in the technology stacks of WCF, WPF, Silverlight, and Entity Framework. He is currently working on a project with ONeil Associates in Miamisburg using those technologies to implement a document production application.

Resources
Dan’s Blog: http://www.danlmoyer.com/
 
Starting point.  Links to How Do I Videos, Tutorials,  Training kit
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lightswitch
 
Video discussing LightSwitch architecture
http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Steve-Anonsen-and-John-Rivard-Inside-LightSwitch
 
LightSwitch team blogs
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lightswitch/
 
Two of the more prolific LightSwitch team bloggers:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bethmassi/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/robertgreen/
 
Michael Washington and Paul Patterson’s related LightSwitch blogs.
http://lightswitch.adefwebserver.com/
http://www.paulspatterson.com/microsoft-lightswitch-article-index/