Tuesday May 20, 2008
Agile Development & Exploit the XML Capabilities of SQL Server 2008
Presenter: Greg Huber - Preficient/ Jason Follas - Preficient
Greg will be presenting on using agile development methodologies in the real world. This talk is very practical and will give you insight into understanding agile, risks, how and when to use it, and the tangible benefits you can expect. The concepts presented are based on real projects where agile methodologies have been implemented successfully.
XML-based data is very prevalent in today's data world to the point that every database developer should know how to work with XML. Middle-tier translation of XML into relational data may be inflexible, and often leads to a loss of fidelity over time. One solution is to move the XML handling into the database itself in order to improve overall integration. SQL Server 2005 provides powerful XML processing features that allow easy access to ata stored within XML without sacrificing any of the original fidelity.
Tuesday April 29, 2008
Visual Studio 2008 & SQL Server 2008 Launch Event
Presenter: Brian Prince - Microsoft / Terry Fancher - Marathon Oil Company
The Findlay 2008 Community Launch Event will introduce Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 features and also cover new features in SQL Server 2008.
Tuesday March 25, 2008
Functional C#
Presenter: Dustin Campbell - Developer Express
In recent years, many features have been added to the C# language that make it possible to write programs using techniques from other programming paradigms. Chief among these is functional programming. Often regarded as only being academically useful, functional programming has many practical uses, some of which appear within the .NET Framework itself. In this session, we'll examine some ideas taken from functional programming and see how they might be implemented using language features that already exist within C#. In addition, we'll highlight ways in which the .NET Framework APIs borrow from functional programming.
Tuesday January 29, 2008
Previewing The ASP.NET MVC Framework
Presenter: Nate King - Speedway SuperAmerica
With the recent success of Ruby on Rails, Castle Monorail, and other model-view-controller based web application frameworks, ASP.NET developers who have grown tired of web forms and the complexities and baggage they carry with them have been clamoring for a better approach. The ASP.NET team has taken notice and recently release a technology preview of a new model-view-controller framework for ASP.NET. This presentation will introduce the core concepts of the ASP.NET MVC framework and compare and contrast it with its older sibling - ASP.NET web forms.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Service-Oriented Architecture, WCF and ESB
Presenter: Sam Gentile - INETA Speaker
The term Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become ubiquitous in our industry. Unfortunately, that has led to massive hype that makes it difficult to understand and distinguish the real value of adapting SOA principles. The current definition also suffers from technology-centric views that are based on the technology environment in use today. The session focuses on Real-World SOA principles and patterns. The session then focuses on both WCF and ESBs as examples of technologies used to realize SOA's.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Test Driven Development with Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Presenter: Alexei V. Govorine - Quick Solutions
What tools does VS2005 Team System provides us in order to do TDD? In this presentation we will briefly cover: the main concepts of the TDD, benefits of writing Unit Tests, we will look in to how to leverage VS Integrated Unit Testing, Code Coverage, Code Analysis, and Code Profiling. Part of the demonstration will be going over various types of unit tests, including tests for stored procedures and the web, and generating unit test data driven unit tests, in which data is not coded into a unit test, but rather is pulled from the external source.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Hands on Agile Practices
Presenter: Brian Prince - Quick Solutions
Brian Prince from Quick Solutions will talk about Hands On Agile Practices. Brian will run through the fundamentals of Agile Planning and involve the group in mock sessions of agile practices such as standups, the estimating game, the planning game, and other critical pieces of the Agile puzzle. Been fed up or disappointed by other talks or articles on Agile which really don't tie back to specifics in the real world? If so, then be sure to attend this session because Brian will be doing the real thing, not some fluffy marketing buzzword speak.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Application Development with SharePoint 2007
Presenter: Jeremy Sublett - Composable Systems, Inc.
Think SharePoint will put developers out of a job? Fear not. There are many ways developers can interact with and enhance SharePoint. In this presentation, we'll look at the role developers play in customizing SharePoint to meet value-added business needs. During this talk, we'll see how we, as developers, can spend less time re-inventing the wheel and more time using SharePoint as a foundation for software solutions.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Building SOA based .NET applications with Microsoft Patterns & Practices Service Factory
Presenter: James Bender - Quick Solutions, Inc.
Provide a brief overview and discussion of DSL’s and how the concept of DSL’s has been realized by the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group in the form of Software Factories. Demonstrate how the Service Factory allows developers to quickly create SOA based applications utilizing either web services or WCF in a quick manner that instills best practices and reduces the opportunity for developer error, but can be customized to suit almost any development situation.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Avoiding Database Entropy
Presenter: Brian Sherwin - SureWin Solutions LLC
You've developed your database and deployed your code. Now you need to add the features everyone else wanted. The more you add to the scope of the project, the more you realize your database design isn't going to cut it. You refactor your code-why not refactor your database. Come to learn practical ways to change your production database without tearing your hair out.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Introducing Castle: Inversion of Control, Aspect Oriented Programming, and Active Record
Presenter: Jason Lopp - Marathon Petroleum Company LLC
Castle is an open source project for .net that aspires to simplify the development of enterprise and web applications. Offering a set of tools (working together or independently) and integration with others open source projects, Castle helps you get more done with less code.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Introduction to .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
Presenter: Nathan King - Speedway SuperAmerica LLC
One thing nearly every application has in common is the need to access data. This data can come from a variety of sources such as in-memory structures, relational databases, XML documents, web services, the list goes on and on. The problem we as developers face when attempting to access data from these various sources is that we typically have to access the data in terms set forth by the source. This means that we have to understand and utilize additional APIs and languages such as T-SQL to access relational data and DOM/Xpath/XSLT to access hierarchical data.
.NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) aims to ease this pain by introducing a higher-level, more declarative way of programming against data in which querying, set operations, and transformations become first class language constructs within C# and VB. This additional layer of abstraction will provide developers with the ability to access and manipulate data that comes from very different sources using a single API that is built directly into the language syntax itself.
This presentation will focus on the new query syntax introduced by LINQ and will provide numerous demos that will show how to utilize LINQ to access data from a variety of data sources.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
VISTA, .NET 3.0, & SharePoint Launch Event
Presenter: Brian Prince - Quick Solutions, Inc.
Brian will introduce VISTA and the new features it offers. He will also cover the new features of the .NET 3.0 Framework that is part of the VISTA release. Finally, Brian will cover the latest version of SharePoint and some of the features available in this release.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Deploying apps using WiX
Presenter: Dan Moyer - Plumbline Solutions
Installation is the first thing your customer sees of your software and it may be the last thing they see if it doesn't work right. The success of your product depends on it being installed -- and uninstalled -- correctly without damaging the system.
This session will delve into using WiX and Windows Installer technology to create deployment packages. WiX is an open source tool used to author installation packages. Windows Installer, a part of every Microsoft Windows operating system, processes the data in your installation package to deploy your software.
Topics include using WiX to author an installation package, an overview of Windows Installer, important rules to follow to create well authored packages, an overview of tools in WiX and the Platform SDK which every installation developer needs to know, debugging an installation, developing custom actions, upgrading and patching an installation, using WiX to author a deployment package for a .NET application which updates a SQL database, the registry, and GAC during installation.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Topic: Getting to Know Generics
Presenter: Dustin Campbell - Developer Express, Inc.
Since the release of the .NET Framework 2.0, generics have been a hot topic. But, beyond the basic generic collection classes, they can be challenging to understand and use properly. This session delves into less-obvious uses of generics to create elegant and flexible code. Topics covered include defining generic types and methods, consuming generics and generic constraints. Along the way, we will explore some of the pitfalls of generic development and highlight some of the lesser-known generic nuggets found in the .NET Framework.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Topic: Ruby on Rails (RoR) - From Concept to Code
Presenter: Nate King, SSA
We all know and love .NET and the suite of technologies surrounding it. We've invested countless hours learning .NET and using it to develop complex applications. Occasionally, we'll catch wind of this "great new technology that will take the industry by storm", but more often than not, we ignore it because we’ve heard that story before. However, every few years, one of these new technologies gains enough momentum that it forces us to take notice. In my opinion, Ruby on Rails is one of those technologies. In this presentation, we'll discuss the core concepts and components behind Ruby On Rails and see how easy it is to take advantage of the power and productivity features of Rails to get a database-driven web site up and running.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Topic: Five (Supposedly) Scary Things About .NET (That don't really have to be)
Presenter: Julia Lerman, INETA Speaker
.NET finally enables Visual Basic developers with some functionality and concepts that have no equivalent match in Visual Basic 6.0. Among these are topics that Visual Basic developers typically tend to avoid when learning .NET but they really don't need to be so intimidating. This session will delve into five of these daunting challenges - delegates, reflection, threading, Code Access Security (CAS) and declarative programming - and explain them from the perspective of a Visual Basic developer.
Slides and Code for this presentation and Julia's numerous other presentations available at http://www.thedatafarm.com/talks.aspx.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Topic: Collaborative Applications via Windows SharePoint Services
Presenter: Ravi Peddobhotla & Rajkamal Gopinath
Collaborative Software, WSS, SPS, SharePoint Architecture, Web Parts - Creating and deploying, Web Part Connections.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Topic: Using the Microsoft Enterprise Library
Presenter: Jeremy Sublett - appMechanics.com
The Microsoft Enterprise Library is a free library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. These blocks can be used separately or in combination with one another to greatly speed up your software development. This presentation will provide an overview of the base library and show how it can be used and extended.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Topic: Agile Software Engineering Disciplines Utilizing Windows Workflow Foundation and an ASP.NET 2.0 Code Generator
Presenter: Ken Kutz and Kevin Booth
Following agile software development processes requires creating and utilizing agile software development engineering disciplines.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Topic: Introduction to BizTalk 2006
Presenter: Brian Prince - Quick Solutions
BizTalk 2006 enables rapid development and deployment of solutions for business processes and integration. Learn what BizTalk can do, and what the new features of 2006 are!
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Topic: Writing Quality Code
Presenter: Dave Donaldson - Arcware
Dave will demonstrate the use of tools like Nunit, FxCop, Ncover, and VSTS to write higher quality applications.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006 - INETA Sponsored Event
Topic: It’s all about you! Personalized Web Sites with the ASP.NET 2.0 Portal Framework
Presenter: Josh Holmes - RT Solutions' principal, INETA Speaker and a Microsoft MVP.
Your users can go to thousands of web sites. Why do they come to yours? It's for content that they are interested in. The more focused this content is on them, the more likely they are to re-visit. Through the ASP.NET 2.0 Portal Framework, you can allow the user to narrow that focus and refine it to just the content that they want to see. http://my.msn.com has been using this framework for some time now but it’s available to us now so you will see a lot more personal portal sites popping up. Rather than building web sites, the portal web site developer will focus on building panels of content, called web parts, similar to SharePoint web parts. In this talk, we will discuss how the framework operates as we build a simple web portal application completely with web parts.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Topic: Findlay Area .NET User Group Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event
Presenter: Gary Shank - Marathon Petroleum Company LLC and co-leader of the Findlay Area .NET User Group
Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 combine to form a rich platform for building, testing, and deploying state-of-the-art Web applications. ASP.NET 2.0 is replete with new features, from data source controls and master pages to membership and role management services — features that reduce the amount of code required to create a typical Web site by up to 70%. Visual Studio 2005 features an all-new Web development interface that speeds the development process while offering a rich design-time experience and seamless integration with Visual Studio 2005 Team System. The primary goal of this presentation is to introduce developers to ASP.NET 2.0’s most compelling new features and to the Visual Studio 2005 features that support them.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Topic: Introduction to Contract-First Web Service Development
Presenter: Nathan King - Speedway Super America LLC and co-leader of the Columbus .NET User Group
The .NET Framework and its surrounding technologies have made us more productive by providing us with solid tool support and reducing complexity through the abstraction of lower level APIs. The ASMX framework that is used to develop .NET web services is no different. However, when designing and developing web services that must be interoperable across platforms (not just processes and machines), developers need to be concerned with a great deal more than simply deciding which methods should be decorated with a [WebMethod] attribute. They need to be aware of how technologies such as XML Schema, SOAP and WSDL work together to provide an interoperable contract language for services. This presentation will introduce a contract-first approach to developing web services and compare and contrast that to the code-first approach that many .NET developers are familiar with and use today. The object of the presentation is not to convince you that contract-first is the single best way to develop .NET web services, but that it can help developers who are interested in designing client-friendly and extremely interoperable web services on the .NET platform.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Topic: Applying Architecture and Design Patterns in .NET
Presenter: Martin L. Shoemaker
Architecture and design patterns are well-studied common problems and standard starting points for solutions. Using these starting points as a solid foundation, you can focus your attention on the unique features of your code, trusting that the architecture and major design decisions are covered. In this session, we'll examine some common architecture and design patterns, see how they translate into C# and VB.NET code, see how you could modify and extend the pattern code, and see how you can use these patterns to analyze, architect, and design a complex .NET system.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Topic: Caching in ASP.NET
Presenter: Steven Smith
Steven's presentation will cover caching best practices in both ASP.NET 1.x and new features in 2.0. Retrieving information from a resource outside the application will require more processing steps, and will therefore require more time and resources on the server than if the information can be obtained from within the application space. If the information that will be sent to the browser has already been prepared by a previous request, the application will be able to retrieve that information faster if it has been stored in memory, somewhere along the request/response stream. Known as caching, this technique can be used to temporarily store page output or application data either on the client or on the server, which can then be re-used to satisfy subsequent requests and thus avoid the overhead of re-creating the same information. Caching is particularly suitable when you expect to return the same information in the same format for many different requests.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Topic: Intro to Microsoft ATLAS
Presenter: Brian Prince
Brian will give a brief review of the new technologies announced at the 2005 PDC and then get right into a presentation of Microsoft ATLAS. Brian will explain the architecture, and then walk through a few code demos, and point out some resources. The Atlas Client Script Framework is an extensible, object-oriented 100% JavaScript client framework that allows you to easily build AJAX-style browser applications with rich UI and connectivity to web services. With Atlas, you can write web applications that use a lot of DHTML, Javascript, and XMLHTTP, without having to be an expert in any of these technologies. The Atlas Client Script Framework will work on all modern browsers, and with any web server. It also won't require any client installation at all - to use it, you can simply include references to the right script files in your page.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Topic: Test-Driven Development in .NET
Presenter: Craig Utley
Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a technique gaining acceptance in the development community as a way to significantly reduce software defects while providing a series of tests that can give immediate feedback on the impact of code changes. Creating useful tests against GUIs and database code has always been a challenge. Discover how to properly separate functionality from the UI and appropriately test your application. You’ll learn how to create and run tests, what tests are most useful and why, and how to implement test in order to separate them from production code easily. If you are already using, or considering using, TDD in your applications, this session will show you the best techniques for leveraging this powerful development practice.