Bayesian - Markov Chain Analysis and Typos#

I was doing a Bayesian network assignment for school, minding my own business, when I encountered the following typo (screenshot below). This eventually pushed me over the edge to rant out this blog post you are reading now. Well, I agree that typos happen, we all know about HTTP 1.1 standard specs "Referer" and how that happened, but there is more to it, it's about competition and excel in innovative drive. Heck if Scobelizer can do it, I can do it too.


(Notice the netowrk?.  Yes, it's an old app, I didn't conveniently forgot about it)

No serious; lets see what Joel Spolsky mentioned a while back.

"Look at how Google does spell checking: it's not based on dictionaries; it's based on word usage statistics of the entire Internet, which is why Google knows how to correct my name, misspelled, and Microsoft Word doesn't"...

Competition is always good; but we have to keep the creative ingenious high, right? That's why imagination is more important than Knowledge I assume.

Joel further says

"Like A very senior Microsoft developer who moved to Google told me that Google works and thinks at a higher level of abstraction than Microsoft. "Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the if statement," he said."

Google's practice of academia and industry coherence is thrilling. I remember reading Bill Gates' interview a while back in which he mentioned the importance of being vigilant at the top. He said that anytime there could be a competitor which can challenge MS's might. At that time there weren't many big players around to stand Microsoft's fierce competition which made me think that it's just something cool to say but later on time proved the statement to be correct. Windows Live and Office Live are cool starters but there is some serious catching up to do for several missing opportunities. "Microsoft is different" excuses aren't good enough.  I love Microsoft, it's products, innovation, ease of use and ingenuity it offers but like it's being said:

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."

-Winston Churchill

and

"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing"
-Aristotle





11/30/2005 9:17:04 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Social Networking...the Microsoft Research Way#

From Microsoft Research website...

SNARF, the Social Network and Relationship Finder, developed by Microsoft Research and available for download , is designed to help computer users cope with precisely such scenarios. SNARF, a complement to e-mail programs such as Outlook, filters and sorts e-mail based on the type of message and the user’s history with an e-mail correspondent. The result: a collection of alternative views of your e-mail that can help you make sense of the deluge

Read more





11/30/2005 8:39:25 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Generics Class Types - O'Reilly way#

I found a good Generics  example in C# Cookbook and thought should share. It demonstrate a good use of strong typing and inner classes. I think I'm in compliance with  O'Reilly Policy on Re-Use of Code Examples from Books

Understanding generic class types

            public static void TestGenericClassInstanceCounter()
            {
                  // regular class
                  StandardClass A = new StandardClass(5);
                  Console.WriteLine(A);
                  StandardClass B = new StandardClass(5);
                  Console.WriteLine(B);
                  StandardClass C = new StandardClass(5);
                  Console.WriteLine(C);

                  // generic class
                  
GenericClass<bool> gA = new GenericClass<bool>(5);
      
            Console.WriteLine(gA);
                  GenericClass<int> gB = new GenericClass<int>(5);
                  Console.WriteLine(gB);
                  GenericClass<string> gC = new GenericClass<string>(5);
                  Console.WriteLine(gC);
                  GenericClass<string> gD = new GenericClass<string>(5);
                  Console.WriteLine(gD);

            bool b1 = true;
            bool b2 = false;
            bool bHolder = false;
            // add to the standard class (as object)

            A.AddItem(b1);
            A.AddItem(b2);

            // add to the generic class (as bool)

            gA.AddItem(b1);
            gA.AddItem(b2);

            Console.WriteLine(A);
            Console.WriteLine(gA);

            // have to cast or get error CS0266: 
            // Cannot implicitly convert type 'object' to 'bool'...

            bHolder = (bool)A.GetItem(1);
            // no cast necessary
            bHolder = gA.GetItem(1);

            int i1 = 1;
            int i2 = 2;
            int i3 = 3;
            int iHolder = 0;

            // add to the standard class (as object)
            B.AddItem(i1);
            B.AddItem(i2);
            B.AddItem(i3);

            // add to the generic class (as int)
            gB.AddItem(i1);
            gB.AddItem(i2);
            gB.AddItem(i3);

            Console.WriteLine(B);
            Console.WriteLine(gB);

            // have to cast or get error CS0266: 
            // Cannot implicitly convert type 'object' to 'int'...

            iHolder = (int)B.GetItem(1);

            // no cast necessary
            iHolder = gB.GetItem(1);

            string s1 = "s1";
            string s2 = "s2";
            string s3 = "s3";
            string sHolder = "";

            // add to the standard class (as object)
            C.AddItem(s1);
            C.AddItem(s2);
            C.AddItem(s3);

            // add an int to the string instance, perfectly OK
            C.AddItem(i1);

            // add to the generic class (as string)
            gC.AddItem(s1);
            gC.AddItem(s2);
            gC.AddItem(s3);

            // try to add an int to the string instance, denied by compiler
            // error CS1503: Argument '1': cannot convert from 'int' to 'string'

            //gC.AddItem(i1);

            Console.WriteLine(C);
            Console.WriteLine(gC);

            // have to cast or get error CS0266: 
            // Cannot implicitly convert type 'object' to 'string'...

            sHolder = (string)C.GetItem(1);

            // no cast necessary

            sHolder = gC.GetItem(1);

            // try to get a string into an int, error
            // error CS0029: Cannot implicitly convert type 'string' to 'int'

            //iHolder = gC.GetItem(1);
        }

        public class StandardClass
        {
              // static counter hangs off of the Type for 
              // StandardClass

              static int _count = 0;

            // create an array of typed items

            int _maxItemCount;
            object[] _items;
            int _currentItem = 0;

            // constructor that increments static counter

            public StandardClass(int items)
              {
                _count++;
                _maxItemCount = items;
                _items = new object[_maxItemCount];
              }

            /// <summary>
            /// Add an item to the class whose type 
            /// is unknown as only object can hold any type            
            ///
</summary>
            /// <param name="item">item to add</param>
            /// <returns>the index of the item added</returns>

            public int AddItem(object item)
            {
                
               if (_currentItem < _maxItemCount)
                {
   
                _items[_currentItem] = item;
                    return _currentItem++;
                }
                else
                  throw new Exception("Item queue is full");
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// Get an item from the class
            /// </summary>
            /// <param name="index">the index of the item to get</param>
            /// <returns>an item of type object</returns>

            public object GetItem(int index)
            {
                Debug.Assert(index < _maxItemCount);
                if (index >= _maxItemCount)
                    throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("index");
                return _items[index];
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// The count of the items the class holds
            /// </summary>

            public int ItemCount
            {
                get { return _currentItem; }
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// ToString override to provide class detail
            /// </summary>
            /// <returns>formatted string with class details</returns>

            public override string ToString()
              {
                return "There are " + _count.ToString() +
                    " instances of " + this.GetType().ToString() +
                    " which contains " + _currentItem + " items of type " +
                    _items.GetType().ToString() + "...";

            }

        }

        public class GenericClass<T>
        {
             // static counter hangs off of the 
              // instantiated Type for 
              // GenericClass
              static int _count = 0;

            // create an array of typed items
            int _maxItemCount;
            T[] _items;
            int _currentItem = 0;

            // constructor that increments static counter
              public GenericClass(int items)
              {
                _count++;
                _maxItemCount = items;
                _items = new T[_maxItemCount];
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// Add an item to the class whose type 
            /// is determined by the instantiating type
            /// </summary>
            /// <param name="item">item to add</param>
            /// <returns>the zero-based index of the item added</returns>
            public int AddItem(T item)
            {
                
               if (_currentItem < _maxItemCount)
                {
                    _items[_currentItem] = item;
                    return _currentItem++;
                }
                else
                    throw new Exception("Item queue is full");
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// Get an item from the class
            /// </summary>
            /// <param name="index">the zero-based index of the item to get</param>
            /// <returns>an item of the instantiating type</returns>

            public T GetItem(int index)
            {
                Debug.Assert(index < _maxItemCount);
                if (index >= _maxItemCount)
                    throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("index");
                return _items[index];
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// The count of the items the class holds
            /// </summary>

            public int ItemCount
            {
                get { return _currentItem; }
            }

            /// <summary>
            /// ToString override to provide class detail
            /// </summary>
            /// <returns>formatted string with class details</returns>
              public override string ToString()
              {
                    return "There are " + _count.ToString() +
                    " instances of " + this.GetType().ToString() + 
                    " which contains " + _currentItem + " items of type " +
                    _items.GetType().ToString() + "...";
              }
        }





11/30/2005 8:41:49 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

VS.NET Must-Have Add-Ins#

James Avery in December 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine  talks about Must-Have VS.NET Add-Ins. Following is his list; pretty impressive.

I'd probably add Koders IDE Plugin as well.

Related Articles:

NET Tools: Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now





11/29/2005 10:39:13 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

XMLSerializer and XPath#

I say working with smart people always pays off; For instance last week when I was encountered a particular web service response which wasn't getting parsed by usual XPATH query.

Dim child As XmlNode = doc.SelectSingleNode("/<node>")

As it later turned out, it was because there was no namespace prefix to it. XMLNamespace manager didn't help so Jeremy, our architect with honorary title of "King of RegEx and XPath" suggested using the following:

child.SelectSingleNode("node()[name() = '<node>']").InnerText.Equals(String.Empty)

which no need to mention, worked like charm. He also demonstrated string concatenation has the easiest overload for adding nodes to a DOM tree instead of doing an XMLNode instantiation exercise.

Also, there is gold in these framework class libraries. For instance the following XMLSerializer code snippet always comes in handy for (de)serialization.

Dim StringWriter As New System.IO.StringWriter
Dim XmlSerializer As New System.XML.Serialization.XmlSerializer(<responseObject>.GetType, String.Empty)XmlSerializer.Serialize(StringWriter, <responseObject>.)

Some Links:
XML Serialization in the .NET Framework (Extreme XML)
XML Path Language (XPath)
XPath Tutorial





11/26/2005 9:36:09 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Book Review :: Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook#

My review of Jesse Liberty's "Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook" is published on Los Angeles .NET Developers group website.

It's an excellent delta book on C#, a must read for those who wants to learn the C#'s new features without spending much time on stuff they already know.





11/25/2005 6:06:37 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Thanksgiving with La Vie Boheme#

I’m sure you have noticed that I’ve updated my dasBlog from 1.6 to current release (1.8.5223.2) which provides lots of cool updates. Thanks for the Omar Shahine, Scott Hanselman and Clemens Vasters for putting together this easy to follow upgrade document and this excellent software; it works like a charm.

 

In other news, I’m not sure if it was L-Tryptophan or Rent was just a totally awesome experience! After a filling thanksgiving dinner, we saw the movie version of the rent musical at Paseo, directed by Chris Columbus. The original stage musical is by Jonathan Larson, directed by Michael Greif. With tracks like Seasons Of Love, One Song Glory, Rent and Tango: Maureen, the movie was a knock out.

 

Thomas B. "Tom" Collins: [sung] In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried. In bridges he burned, or the way that she died!

 

Rent Sound Track @ Yahoo Music





11/25/2005 12:38:42 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Post Dev Connections Goodies#

Thanks everyone for sharing their presentations, slides and experiences. As Owen Arthur said “Often, we are too slow to recognize how much and in what ways we can assist each other through sharing such expertise and knowledge.”

Following is the list of presentations, slides and notes compiled by participants and speakers.

 

 

Brandon Satrom’s Mindmaps; excellent mind manager notes, will make you feel like you were almost there.

 

 

Michele Leroux Bustamante

 

Brian Noyes

Paul Litwin’s
(Thanks for the custom assemblies additional slides Paul, congrats on getting Microsoft Ace award!)

 

 

Steven Smith

Markus' Avalon (WPF) Examples

 

Dan Wahlin

New XML Features in .NET Version 2

Work with RSS Feeds using the System.Xml Assembly

Asynchronous Web Service Options in .NET V2

 

And the following non sequitur links on security

 

Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities.

Security Practices: ASP.NET 2.0 Security Practices at a Glance

 

For latest, keep an RSS on DevConnections blog





11/24/2005 5:22:25 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 2#

BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 2 has been launched by Microsoft and is downloadable via Microsoft Beta Home.

BizTalk Adapters for Enterprise Applications ODBA (Orechestration Designer for Business Analyst) beta 2 can also be downloaded from here.





11/24/2005 1:26:41 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

.NET User Groups Dinner- Post Launch Session#

After the MSDN Launch event for Visual Studio.NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005 in Pasadena, Bernard Wong, Southern California's Developer Community Champion and his team organized a get together with user group organizers in Pasadena Hilton. It was a nice event; Bernard and his developer events team casually discussed the role of community and user groups in developer training. Members from various Southern California user groups (Los Angles .NET Developers Group, Los Angles SQL Server Professionals Group, Southern California .NET Developers Group)  were there (Let me know if I missed someone)   to share the experience and knowledge with us newbies.

Valuable lessons were learned about user groups organization, getting good speakers, INETA, community development best practices etc. Thanks to the DCC and his team for this effort.

 

 





11/19/2005 11:58:09 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

MCP Exams for $35#

Via MCPMag

“Microsoft is giving a big break to students who obtain training through IT Academy schools in the U.S., with a significant discount on MCP exams. Exams will be available for $35; original exam prices for IT Academy students is $60.“

Read More





11/17/2005 9:32:37 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

 

MSDN Launch Event in Pasadena 11/17#

Today we are having an MSDN launch event in beloved Pasadena.  Following are the details from MSDN Events; I was told that every registered attendee will recieve a copy of SQL Server and Visual Studio.NET 2005 Standard edition.

The Best of Visual Studio 2005 Launch - Powered by MSDN Events

Thursday, November 17, 2005 1:00 PM - Thursday, November 17, 2005 5:00 PM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Welcome Time: 12:30 PM

Language: English-American

Hilton Pasadena
168 South Los Robles Avenue
Pasadena California
91101
United States

General Event Information
Products: SQL Server and Visual Studio.

Recommended Audience: Developer.

The Best of Visual Studio 2005 Launch is here!

This ½ day Microsoft event highlights the best technical sessions from the upcoming worldwide launch event of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.  This event offers an opportunity to learn how Microsoft’s application platform offerings enable organizations to gain better business insight and deliver faster results by easily connecting people, processes and information.  We’ll take a comprehensive look at the new Visual Studio 2005 product line – including those features found in Visual Studio Team System.  We’ll also explore Web development using Visual Studio 2005 and ASP .NET 2.0 and Smart Client application development and deployment.

Dates, times and locations are subject to change.  Please visit: http://www.msdnevents.com to confirm the event information within 24 hours of the event.

Come early and catch The Best of SQL Server 2005 Launch from 8am – 12pm.  Visit: http://www.technetevents.com to register.





11/17/2005 9:20:00 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Plumbing is Evil - Knowing your service options#

I shouldn't be writing this since Dino Esposito said in his ASP.NET call backs session, “Plumbing is evil“; It was mentioned in in the context that a developer shouldn't have to worry about plumbing but concentrating mainly on the underlying business logic. However there are times when knowing your plumbing options are important. Somehow for several people I know, including myself, in the back of our heads the words web services and HTTP are intermingled like synonyms; Simon Guest's article “Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Choosing Alternate Transports for Web Services” published in Microsoft Architecture Journal 5 is a good read if you want to scratch this out of your head.

Long ago in a Los Angles .NET developers group meeting, Jefferey Hasan also mentioned that WSDL can define TCP as web service end points; this was enough turning an HTTP zealot's world upside down. It's becoming more and more a config change with upcoming Windows Communications Framework (Indigo). But if you think about it, it's all good to fulfill the interop promise; eventually we all want to get along, don't we?





11/17/2005 9:14:01 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Aristocracy, Democracy and System Design#

From Brooks' famous Mythical Man month essay collection, I liked surgical team (chapter 3) and Aristocracy, Democracy and System Design (chapter 4) more than mostly talked Mythical man month. It's because I found modern PERT and GANTT evaluation more scientifically correct than “parallel task“ definitions he used to describe the inter-process correlation. Following is an excellent quote I found in chapter 4.

 

 

“It is not enough to learn the elements and rules of combinations; one must also learn the idiomatic usage, the whole lore of how the elements are combined in practice. Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity. Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity. Every part must reflect the same philosophies and the same balancing of desiderata. Every part must even use the same techniques in syntax and analogous notions in semantics. Ease of use, then, dictates unity of design, conceptual integrity.“

 

– Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering





11/15/2005 11:18:35 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

IIS 5.0 Isolation Mode and IIS 6.0 ramblings#

Recently I've encountered some application permission issues during QA when moved an existing app. from IIS 5.0 Isolation mode to IIS 6.0. Since the entire operation comprised of several layers (web - web service – Business objects - data access layer), there was a need to determine what user account is being used. I found myself writing the following lines which  helped.

Response.Write ("Page Identity: " + Page.User.Identity.Name.ToString ()+ "<br>");
Response.Write ("Principal Windows Identity: " + System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name.ToString () + "<br>");
Response.Write ("Page Identity: " + System.Threading.Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity.Name.ToString ()+ "<br>");

It's common knowledge that in IIS 6.0, the worker process is w3wp.exe as compared to aspnet_wp in its predecessor. The process runs under the NETWORK SERVICE account. The NETWORK SERVICE account has access to the machine credentials for outbound connections. Following is the output of the Principal Windows Identity statement. A comparative analysis of other identities is explained here.


With IIS 5.0 Isolation mode:
Principal Windows Identity: <MachineName>\ASPNET

Without IIS Isolation mode
Principal Windows Identity: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

I found the following links to be useful during this information pursuit.

 

 





11/15/2005 11:03:13 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

TOP 5 Reasons why DevConnections was a raving success#

 Did DevConnections conference provide value for time and money companies or individuals paid? The answer is yes and here is why.

Marvellous Learning Experience: Right from the source it was. The conference had a fine selection of speakers; Microsoft speakers, other independent Microsoft technology gurus, authors and professional developers. These speakers delivered well in the short session times, provided insight to the product so developers can explore it further with the provided guidelines in order to learn. With the wide variety of tracks and sessions, there was no developer left behind. I mean, how can you resist learning resources like Dino Esposito, Michele Leroux Bustamante, Juval Lowy, Julie Lerman, Kathleen Dollard and Scott Guthrie?

Peer Networking: Got a chance to meet excellent development crew from all across the nation;likes of Brandon Satrom. Got a chance to talk to them about best practices, new technology and enterprise approaches. There is no substitute for this kind of interaction.

Future Direction of Technology: Development arena is changing for good and you don't want to be left behind. DevConnections provided Microsoft's vision for future, where technology is heading towards, what approaches to follow, how to migrate, interop and create future proof applications. So next time someone talks about future apps which will be around for next 5 yrs, I'd have informed input on that.

Software: Like Paul said “ I just heard from a reliable source that we were the only event that was able to give away Visual Studio 2005 Professional to attendees (rather than the Standard Edition that is being given out at the Launch events). “. It was an unbelieveable giveaway.

Post and pre-conference sessions:  Let's face it, conference sessions were time crunched. However fast Michele Leroux Bustamante would speaks, there was no way she could get it all across within an hour and fifteen minutes. Therefore, pre and post conference sessions were arranged which specialized in the most pertaining topics to satiate this thirst of knowledge.

and I'm sure you have your own list of reasons and notes to explain it to your manager. Make sure you share it with the fellow developers who weren't here so they can appreciate the technology better and attend Orlando event in April.

and then of course there was nice food, starbucks, wifi, great deals on books, goodies and prizes.

GrandView at Las Vegas has a beautiful view from 12th floor...I can see the entire city and...wait, there are two pools, and two spas and a fitness room and a game room...I'm out.





11/12/2005 7:55:19 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Juval Löwy's Post Conference Session - Visual C# 2.0#

Juval Lowy's post conference workshop on C# 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 was excellent!. He covered IDE tips and tricks, language features and very cool practical features of utilizing VS.NET 2005 effectively. It was a full day session (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM) but due to the sheer amount of contents discussed during the talk left much space for further exploration.

Kudos and Many thanks to organizers for arranging this excellent conference. Also, thanks to Juval Lowy and other speakers on their hard work exploring and explaining the new technology to developers.

 





11/12/2005 12:59:02 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections Day 4 - Closing Q&A session#

Q&A  Session was pretty cool...as Paul summarized it “at the closing session we answered questions from the audience and gave away two DVD players, 3 IPod Nanos, 3 conference passes, two XBox 360s, and a few other things I can't recall.“

Following are the topics covered in Q&A. I'll post the answers soon.

  • Is Visual Studio Team System avaialble for other platforms.
  • Does Oracle connection performance issues with .NET connectivity still exist in 2005?
  • What are some of the resources for a developer who works extensively with Geographical applications?
  • Presentation slides avaialbility on the website
  • Migration from SQL Server 2000 to 2005 - DTS etc
  • Is MSDN universal still a universal subscription?
  • Is there any pottenial breaking chance for frameworks side by side execution?
  • How long would it take for voice enabled applications to really start working?
  • What would I gain by just moving my .NET 1.x apps to 2.0 (runtime, no coding changes, no recompilations)?
  • When is the next version of enterprise library due to come out?
  • Can we build a 1.x application in VS.NET 2005
  • What is modified in Enterprise services in VS.NET 2005?


Attendee asking question; Can see Bernard Wong, Paul Litwin, Kathleen Dollard, Julie Lerman, Dino Esposito, Carl Franklin and Juval Lowy on stage. Now this is an expert panel!

An attendee asking question.

Paul Litwin doing the draw.

Audience

There was an interesting question with over 10 different answers:

What is the blockbuster feature of VS.NET 2005?

Answers from the panels were

  • MasterPages
  • SQL Query Notification services
  • Class design
  • System.Transaction
  • System.Notification
  • Generics

and I lost the count....





11/11/2005 11:35:52 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections Day 4 - with Carl Franklin#

After .NET rocks live show from devConnections, I met Carl Franklin yesterday; His official title is “NET Wonk, MVP for Visual Basic, MSDN Regional Director, Hunter/Gatherer, Host of .NET Rocks“. A very friendly person!





11/11/2005 10:43:44 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections - Michael Bundschuh talks slides#

Thanks to Michael Bundschuh, following are the slides of his excellent presentations.

Visual Studio Team System Session Slides

Migration from ASP 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0 Session slides

These should also be avaialble from devConnections website soon.





11/10/2005 1:13:06 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections - SQL Server Reporting Services#

Paul Litwin’s session on SQL Server reporting services was an informative, developer oriented , no-fluff introduction to reporting services programming. It taught the audience, slowly but surely, what this powerful technology can do for us.  I know this because I was involved in the migration of an existing reporting system to SQL Server reporting services for my company and I witnessed  know how much users just loved it. Based on these experiences, I wrote a three part article some time ago.  

Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

 

For those of you who missed it and are interested in SQL RS, please download the samples from his site.


Paul Enlightening the fellow developers.





11/10/2005 7:02:26 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections Day 3#

 

Learning at devConnections, or any high-paced-hi-tech-content-packed technical conferences for that matter, is different from conventional educational process. The contents covered in the sessions are of broader nature and requires deep understanding and discussion before fully “digested” by mind. Due to time crunch, it’s obviously not possible to have one day workshop on any or all of these topics however speakers are capable enough to elaborate and share the insights for much longer than that. Therefore, what I believe has learned from devConnections, is the vision of future development direction along with understood of toolset. I’m being made equipped with the comprehension of next generation toolset and solutions available at my disposal. I’d have to do studies, research, follow-ups on my own to master the tool and techniques discussed in the sessions here but the fundamental path is laid out for me and this I believe is the core achievement of this conference.

 

When it came to select the sessions, Wednesday was not an easy day. There were several very interesting classes running simultaneously and attendees had the difficult task to choose just the most pertinent one (all of them were pertinent, trust me!). I attended the following [will expand this stub with details on every session] and will drool on the slides from others.

  • Migrating from Web Services to Service oriented architecture by Dan Wahlin
  • SQL Server Reporting Services for developers by Paul Litwin
  • Best Practice Approaches to .NET 2.0 Localization architecture Michele Leroux Bustamante
  • Tracing and Profiling in VS.NET 2005 by Kathleen Dollard
  • Building Applications, Next Generation, MSBuild by Don Kiely
  • Scripts Callbacks by Dino Esposito  


(More Pictures to come)

 

And yes, Vinod won the Harley, you lucky guy!





11/10/2005 6:58:32 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Wall Climbing @ Game Place#

Jeremy, John and Me, climbing the wall.

and I kicked Jeremy's behind in Street Fighter...yes, twice in a row...bring it on Ken, Ryu will see you!

\





11/10/2005 6:53:01 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections Day 2#

[This blog post is a stub. I’ll be expanding it soon with details from sessions]

Tuesday was the first and quite a busy day here at devConnections 2005 . After Mat Nunn’s introduction to SQL server 2005, I attended Jonathan Hawkin, lead program manager Microsoft Corp’s presentation on “Developing ASP.NET server control with design time support” which was highly informative.

Matt Nunn's SQL Server Keynote session.

Michael Bundschuh’s “Best practices and techniques for mitigating ASP.NET 1.x applications to ASP.NET 2.0” was full of practical help regarding migration. He walked us through a real conversion, identified the potential issues and resolved it. He kindly gave me permission to publish the slides on my blog till it becomes available on devConnections website but stupid exchange blocked the PPT files; I’m waiting for him to resend me on a different address.

 

The Microsoft Panel answering questions.

Lunch was pretty tasty and well organized; it’s difficult to manage 3000 people but. Kudos to organizers, they are trying to keep the crowds well distributed.

“Tips and tricks for ASP.NET 2.0 and visual studio 2005” by Bradley Millington were also among sessions I believe have learned from.  “Creating dynamic websites with ASP.NET 2.0 web parts” by Stefan Schackow was interesting but I found its level to be a bit basic.

 

Since I’ve already attended Atlas project presentation recently at San Diego .NET developers group meeting, I opted to go for “Extending ASP.NET membership and role manager with custom providers” in which Stefan Schackow demonstrated custom data store integration with membership roles along with code examples.

 

Microsoft unplugged night was the best part of the day. It was an open mike questions night in which Microsoft’s panel was answering audience’s questions. The questions asked by fellow developers were highly wide and diverse. To give you an idea, following are some of the topics.

 

VS.NET 2005 features

XSLT debugging

Team Studio

SQL Server 2005 Migration from SQL server 7.0

Reporting Services Excel export

Running .NET framework on Linux (Mono Project)

What kind of stuff is penciled out for SQL Server 2010

Atlas

Source safe

Increasing spider ability

 

Did I mention Jeremy was doing Karaoke at 3:00 in the morning!

Following are some Misc pictures I haven't organized yet.

More Microsoft Panel

 

The massive lunch and expo hall which accomodates over 3000 people.

 





11/9/2005 2:58:49 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Tablet PC hands on lab#

Having Tablet PC hands on lab workshop running in parallel with trade show was  a great idea.  Microsoft is taking a bold initiative in ink based development. The hand writing recognition is way more refined than I've used before and controls are sophisticated. It has made much easier for developers to use the power of ink; hwnd mapping was a neat idea too. I see it as definitely the future of input devices.

Following is my first tablet PC application.





11/9/2005 7:42:18 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

 

Meet the Authors#

With Charles Petzold, the living legend of win32 API programming.

With Scott Guthrie; a Microsoft product unit manager on web platform and tools who got ASP.NET started and hence considered Father of ASP.NET





11/9/2005 6:35:39 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections Day 1 [Update]#


After pre-conference workshops and sessions, the keynote session started at 6:30 AM at south pacific ballroom. Paul Litwin gave brief introduction of devConnections and enlighten us about the significance of this event as it lined up with the visual studio 2005 launch.

Paul Litwin Speaking at the launch.

 

Time Machine - Dev Connections 1985 by Charles Petzold

Charles Petzold was the next speaker with a very interesting topic “DevConnections 1985“. It was an excellent presentation!... Charles took us back in 1985 and even though he was running windows 1.0 and DOS on virtual PC, the whole speech was flawlessly aimed to discuss top view, deskview and evolution of graphical user interfaces (I was discussing this later with John and he mentioned side kick and Norton commander not being mentioned). It was a pure Charles style presentation; reminded me of a true geek whose book, Programming windows was defacto for API programming at the time when I was doing bachelors. He coined the phrases like “I know you are all accustomed to assembly and aren't comfortable with C because of performance issues“ and “I don't know about you guys but I'm going home and write me some windows programs.“

Charles Petzold, talking about horror or TSR's.

Charles Petzold, demonstrating multi-tasking with Windows 1.1

 

Scott Guthrie: VS 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed.

Scott started the “75 new features in 40 minutes” presentation with a little bit of background about the product and how he started the project in May 2003 with anticipation of completing it by March 2004. He made a short video explaining the development process of ASP.NET as a product. The video is a must see! It summarized what were 15 team members of ASP.NET development team were doing in between playing foosball and writing specs. Detail object model specs of ASP.NET Grid View control were 67 pages long. The entire library comprises of 8 million lines of code in 1800 files. He later showed internals of webpart class and elaborated on stress and unit testing procedures for grilling this massive product. 512,000 test cases were written and then an internal app, maddot testcase manager was used to perform stress testing on 370 machines simulating 7000 hits per second which accumulated to be 15 billion requests.


In the second part of his presentation, Scott described the functionality of the product, design view enhancements etc. The most exciting feature was unit testing within the IDE. He also showed how VS.NET provides the support for code coverage and automatically highlights the untested parts. Further feature sets described included Intellisense everywhere (configs, markup…you name it), dynamic code updates (no recompile for changes, both in C# and VB.NET, even with breakpoints), object data source, output cache, sql dependency, memberships, master detail view, personalization, security, webparts etc. He mentioned that Hilton, HMV, NHS and citigroup have been using ASP.NET since beta and have been using the cool new features which helped his team creating a stable, feature rich and sophisticated product.

And then there was also an awesome marketing video shown about HMV, which Matt Nunn showed again in the keynote this morning. 

I’ve seen this in several presentations before but it’s always nice to see the extensive featureset offered by Microsoft next generation development tools. 

Some other pictures of me, Jeremy and John.


Three of us at keynote.

Jeremy's cool pose.

Playing XBOX at SQL magazine stall in the expo.





11/8/2005 11:04:56 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

PreConference workshops and Registration#

Monday Nov 7th, Las Vegas NV:

Me and Jeremy arrived at Las Vegas airport from Burbank really fast, within 35 minutes! Our flight was supposed to be an hour long but we were standing right there in Vegas at 11:34 AM...that was amazing. Finding hotel and registration was easy; In order to go to Mandalay Bay, we've to walk some freeways and do some death defying runs in places where there is no sidewalk but I think we'd survive.

Registration for DevConnections was well organized. Upon registration, I've got a nice backpack, a cool conference book with print out from slides and space for writing notes along with November issue of ASP.NET pro magazine (which I already had).

Now I'm having a hard time deciding events between all the four conferences since they are all really yummy. Tempting Business Intelligence in SQL connections, Practical web apps in  ASP.NET connections, cutting edge patterns, practices and architecture in Visual Studio Connections and in-depth OO in C++ Connections...some really difficult choices to make (now you see the importance of cloning)

So, if I must decide, Tomorrow I'd be taking

9:45 - 10:45 :Jonathan Hawkin's Developing an ASP.NET Server Control with design time support.
(WCF/Indigo track is nice but I've taken Ami Vora's presentation in Anaheim on Indigo tour before).

11:00 - 12:00 : Data Access in ASP.NET 2.0 / Patterns and Practices Enterprise Library*

1:30 - 2:30: How to Build Win Form today which will interop well with Avalon / Tips and Tricks for ASP.NET 2.0 and VS.NET 2005*

2:45 - 3:45: Creating dynamic websites with ASP.NET 2.0 webparts / In-depth look at win forms*

4:15 -  5:15: Extending ASP.NET memberships and role manager with custom providers / Microsoft Security development life-cycle.*

and then of course T-Shirt redemption

7:00 - 9:00: Microsoft unplugged (quizzes, prizes, giveaways)

I'll soon leave to attend VS 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 unleashed keynote of Scott Guthrie; will write about it later during the night.


*There is a tie here, let's see what Jeremy decides to take





11/7/2005 4:44:56 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Green Dot is Hiring!#

Green Dot Corporation is looking for talented professionals in the following categories.

  • Developers - contact (Nick.DeNicholas @ don'tspam - nextestate.com)
  • QA Analysts - contact (Eric.Simons@ don'tspam - nextestate.com)
  • Business System Analysts - contact (Andrea.Kim@ don'tspam - nextestate.com)
  • Experienced Configuration Management Engineer - contact (Nick.DeNicholas @ don'tspam - nextestate.com)

If you know good people, please recommend them to contact the above mentioned managers. Take out the no spam part from the email address when you mail.

About us: Green Dot Corporation, formerly Next Estate Communications, Inc., is a pioneer in prepaid financial products and services and is America's first and largest provider of association-branded prepaid debit cards sold at retail stores. It is also the owner and operator of the Green Dot Financial Network, one of America's largest retail-based cash acceptance networks.

Green Dot's MasterCard® and Visa® prepaid debit card products are carried by more than 45,000 retailers in all fifty states including major chains such as Walgreens, RadioShack, Rite Aid, CVS/pharmacy, Dollar General, and many other leading chains. From everyday use, travel, online and student use, Green Dot prepaid debit cards can be used wherever MasterCard or Visa debit cards are accepted.

PS. Don't forget to mention you read it on my blog (it gives you extra credibility or not :) )





11/4/2005 5:35:32 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

DevConnections Bloggers#

Paul Litwin published the list of DevConnection bloggers last night. It's surely going to be a well recorded event.

Dino Esposito
Don Kiely
Paul Litwin
Adnan Masood
Tim Mitchell
Dmitry Robsman
Brandon Satrom





11/2/2005 8:31:37 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Kathleen Dollard in Visual Studio Connections - Las Vegas #


Microsoft MVP and INETA speaker, Kathleen Dollard will be conducting following sessions in Visual Studio Connections. I found her teaching and presentation style to be developer friendly and topics look interesting. Unless already occupied, I should definitely be found in first row.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005 at 9:45 AM
Polishing Your WinForm Application
.NET 2.0 offers a host of new features that let you take your application from OK to wow! You’ll see these techniques to solve real world problems that illustrate the underlying WinForms architecture.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005 at 11:15 AM
Tracing and Profiling in Visual Studio 2005
I'll cover both the new base class library tracing features and the extended features provided to profile your application in Team System. Tracing and profiling have finally grown up to be full fledged tools to extend the lifetime of your applications.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005 at 3:45 PM
Declarative Unit Testing
I'll cover the basics of unit testing and test driven development, then dive into showing you how you can generate certain types of test to imrpove the logical coverage of your application.

Thursday, November 10, 2005 at 11:15 AM
Debugging and Exception Handling in .NET
I'll be doing a fundamentals track talk spit between two topics. Exception handling lets you efficiently deliver information when a problem arises, and debugging lets you find the problem with or without good exception information.





11/1/2005 10:00:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

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