MIX10 – Day Two

by Van 17. March 2010 15:10

The second day of MIX10 started with a Keynote. The day two keynote stated with the IE team. One of the main things they demonstrated is IE9 working with HTML5. Showing how IE9 with the new Window7 hardware can take advantage to it for better performance especially with video.  

The Gu was back again for the second day taking about The improvements in ASP.NET 4.0, ASP.NET MVC 2.0.

We then saw great demos with Odata using the new Netflix feed.

To finish up the keynote was Bill Buxton who did a great talk on Natural User Interfaces.

My first session of the day was “OData: There's a Feed for That”. This session talked about how “OData” started at MIX07 with a session on Project Astoria, It then became ADO.NET Data Services with Visual Studio 2008. This session show using “Odata” in Excel 2010 with the power pivot plug-in. They also demonstrated converting Sharepoint 2010 List into an OData feed.

My next session was “Developing with WCF RIA Services Quickly and Effectively”. This was favorite session of the day. They showed some very good real world examples for using RIA services. Show how to use the MVVM pattern; demonstrated using authorization; doing validations. The best part for me was when he demonstrated RIA service on the windows phone.

 

My last session of the data was “Implementing OData: How to Create a Feed for That”. He started off showing Pivot on top of “Odata”. The demonstration how you control your data that you expose as an “Odata” feed.

PDC09 – Day One

by Van 18. November 2009 15:25

This was the first keynote ever that I was late for; I missed the first five minute. I will have to go back and watch it on line to see what I missed. The highlight of the keynote was, of course, the enhancements to Windows Azure. One of the big things for me was Ray talking about private clouds; hosted clouds and public clouds; this I think will be good way to get the major Corporations on board. They show partners with good stories on why the cloud is important. Another announcement that made at the keynote is that Windows Azure was going to support other development tools like PHP. This could be game changing, because Microsoft is including all developers(I heard them using the word Tomcat).  At the keynote there were also demonstrations with the new Identity frame. The keynote shows functionality in Visual Studio 2010, that I was not aware of like support for multiple monitors. This was also the first Keynote that I can remember that finished early (they usually finish late).

After the keynote was a snack break, good thing there was no breakfast because I would have not been able to resist the doughnuts.

Next on my schedule I had “FT02 - Data Programming and Modeling for the Microsoft .NET Developer “, which I chose, and “FT11 - Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic”. This session was really talking about modeling with the ADO.NET Entity framework. It is focusing on the new features in the Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP 2 for Visual Studio 2010.  This session demonstrated the modeling tools “M” and “Quantant” with Entity Framework. This one of the technologies I will be trying out when I return to Virginia.

The lunch buffet followed, I grab too much food, could not finish the salmon (it was good). I did however finish desert.   After eating I did quick walk around the “Big Room” saw the HOL (Hands-on-labs), some looked interesting will have to go back later. There however was a long line for the Windows Azure HOL (there are giving away a Flip Camera for completing one). I decided to go to a Lunch session (It was on my schedule), “CL30 - Microsoft Expression Blend 3 for Developers: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices”. I am trying to use Blend and have been many sessions on it this year (Mix, Tech-ed, local user groups and code camps).  I also bought a book on it. I believe the more exposure the better I will become at it. This session showed me things I need to try. I will have to watch this session again online with Blend opened.

Next on my schedule I had “FT18 - Microsoft ASP.NET Futures”.  Since I am an ASP.Net developer, this was a great session for me.  This session showed the features the ASP.Net team is working on. The ASP.Net Helpers I thought was very interesting (email verification; background task; file upload progress).     

The next session I went to was “FT10 - Evolving ADO.NET Entity Framework in Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and Beyond”, which was on schedule, this was a great follow-up the “FT02 - Data Programming and Modeling for the Microsoft .NET Developer”, I went to earlier. This session show how to use your POCO classes to generate a database from them (very cool). Other things that were demonstrated; the use of Store Procs, doing lazy loading, and the use of the repository pattern in EF.

For the last session of the day I had “CL23 - SketchFlow: Prototyping to the Rescue” and “FT32 - Code Contracts and Pex: Power Charge Your Assertions and Unit Tests”. However at that point in the day I was not in a mode for either topic, so I went to “FT08 - Code Visualization, UML, and DSLs” instead. This session demonstrated some of the new architect features and why they are useful for developers. I especially liked thing how it handle existing code with diagrams to help a developer figure out what the code is doing.

I was then off to the Partner Expo. I have a goal on trying not to bring home too much SWAG. There were great T-Shirts as always. Free beer, hamburgers; still full from lunch (there was a lot of food there).

The highlight of PDC09 Day One – the changes in EF

About Van

Van, a Senior Web Developer for Innervisions Software, Inc. since 1996, started programming Mainframes using COBOL, JCL for AT&T in 1979. While at AT&T, Van was part of many development teams that produced enterprise level applications and systems using CICS, IMS and other mainframe technologies. 

Van bought his first personal computer in 1982, an Apple II+, and started to write programs for home use in Applesoft (Basic Microsoft created for the Apple II) . 

Van first started working with Microsoft technologies using Access 1.0 and Visual Basic 3.0. In 2000, Van attended VS Live in Orlando where he was first exposed to .Net. He started programming .Net with Visual Studio .Net Beta 2. He became an Independent Consultant in 1996 and started Innervisions Software, Inc. 

In 2003 he wrote his first professional ASP.Net app. Since 2004 Van has been subcontracting on an IRS project using ASP.Net, VB.Net, and SQL Server.


He spends his spare time working on the web site for Prince William Special Olympics which was created using Dot Net Nuke.   Van is currently working on a Silverlight app for Prince William Special Olympics to manage their volunteers.


Van has a BA in Mathematics from Lehman College in New York City and a MS in Computer Science from George Washington University. Van holds MCP certifications in Visual Basic, Access, ASP.Net and SQL Server.

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