Thursday, November 15, 2007 Silverlight 101: What, Where and How
Subject:	You must register at http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=120984 in order to be admitted to the building and attend. This session will include an overview of Silverlight – What is it? Where did it come from? and how do I develop for it. Topics will include the current state of Web Development (customer expectations, developer view, designer view), Coding with Silverlight (XAML, C#, JavaScript), Silverlight Development Tools (Expression Product Suites/Visual Studio) as well as some live demos/ and hands on coding. Both versions of Silverlight(1.0 & 1.1) will be covered.
Speaker:	David Isbitski, Industry Platform Team, Microsoft David is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft working on the Industry Platform Team covering both Financial Services and Health/Life Sciences Industries. He has over 12 years total IT experience and has been creating enterprise solutions with Microsoft Products since Visual Basic 5. He enjoys talking about technology and has taught full day courses on various Microsoft topics as well as being a presenter at numerous Microsoft Events including MSDN RoadShows, Code Camps and Remix.
Date:	Thursday, November 15, 2007
Time:	Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM
Location:	Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor
Directions:	B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr 1 to 50th St./Bway N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.

I am speaking next week at TechEd in Barcelona, Spain.

DAT302 Database Design Patterns: Architecting the Right Data Model for the Right Application
Mon, Nov 5 17:45 - 19:00 Tent 1

Architecting an application starts with the database. Different applications need different data models. Fifth normal form is great for an OLTP database, but reporting databases need more of a flat denormalized structure and different Web sites need several different types of data models: eCommerce sites need different data models than traditional publishing sites. You need to optimize your data model for your application's performance needs. Concurrent users, data load, transactions per minute, report rendering, and query seek time all determine the type of data model you will need. See how different applications and different parts of an application can use different data models and how you can architect your database to fit into your application's needs and not the other way around.

DAT315 T-SQL Querying: Tips and Techniques
Tue, Nov 6 17:00 - 18:15 Room 117

Take your queries to the next level! This highly technical, yet entertaining session focuses solely on advanced querying techniques to get the most out of your SQL Server 2005 database. See a series of real-world examples to extract data from your databases in ways you've never seen before. Techniques demonstrated include an ultra-fast way to do crosstab queries in SQL Server, running totals and ranking. Along the way you'll get some insight into how SQL Server works and we’ll preview some of the new capabilities in SQL Server 2008 (“Katmai”).

WEB02-IS Top Ten ASP.NET Scaling Tips
Wed, Nov 7 15:45 - 17:00 Room 112

This interactive session pulls together the best methods for improving the scalability of your ASP.NET Web site. See a variety of techniques, including caching, pooling, paging and asynchronous processing. But more importantly, learn a method for ranking each of the techniques according to the benefit to your Web site. By comparing the potential benefit of a technique with its cost to implement, this interactive session will give you a plan for what to do next to most improve your site’s performance.

Topic: Database Design Patterns: Architecting the Right Data Model for the Right Application

Architecting an application starts with the database. Different applications need different data models. Fifth normal form is great for an OLTP database, but reporting databases need more of a flat denormalized structure and different Web sites need several different types of data models: eCommerce sites need different data models than traditional publishing sites. You need to optimize your data model for your application's performance needs. Concurrent users, data load, transactions per minute, report rendering, and query seek time all determine the type of data model you will need. See how different applications and different parts of an application can use different data models and how you can architect your database to fit into your application's needs—not the other way around.  The presentation will include 5 demos that cover:

1.      A Slowly Changing Dimension

2.      Fact Tables

3.      Horizontal Partitioning

4.      Table and Index Partitioning

5.      Vertical Partitioning

To find out how to design the right database structure for the right situation come to the meeting.

Presenter: Stephen Forte.

Stephen is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Corzen, Inc, a Manhattan (USA) based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Corzen was recently acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN).  Stephen is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region and speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on database development including Programming SQL Server 2005 (MS Press) and is working on Programming SQL Server 2008 (MS Press).  Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder and CTO of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group. Stephen is also an MBA candidate (June 2008) at the City University of New York (Baruch College).  

Location: The meeting will be held at Microsoft, 1290 Avenue of the Americas on the 6^th floor starting at 6PM. You must RSVP to wzack at microsoft.com in order to be admitted to the meeting and so that we will know how much pizza and soda to order. J 

Sponsor: Our sponsor for the meeting will be Sogeti USA. If you know of any other companies who would like to sponsor a meeting in the future please let us know.

Thursday, October 18, 2007 Using Blend and Visual Studio 2005 to Build Distributed WPF Applications
Subject:	This session will provide an overview of the .NET 3.0 framework with special focus paid to Windows Presentation Foundation. The demos will show the new IDE, user controls, and data binding with tiered architecture to demonstrate WPF as a rich user interface technology for developers using Visual Studio or Blend.
Speaker:	Asli Bilgin, Microsoft Platform Strategy team Asli Bilgin is an industry recognized speaker on the latest advancements with Microsoft technologies. She currently serves on Microsoft’s Platform Strategy team for Financial Services. In this role, she advises the leading banking and capital market companies on the best practices for technology strategies. Asli is a well-respected speaker at international technology conferences, and serves as a contributing editor to various technical publications. She recently worked with CNET to host the video series: “At The Whiteboard” – an overview into Microsoft’s latest developer tools including Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team System, and Internet Information Server 7.0. She’s also created and hosted DVD box sets for training series sets covering Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX with Total Training. Her book “Mastering Database Programming With Visual Basic.NET," (Sybex) has been translated into six languages and serves as the curriculum for college and post-graduate institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, and India.
Date:	Thursday, October 18, 2007
Time:	Reception 6:15 PM , Program 6:30 PM
Location:	Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor
Directions:	B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr 1 to 50th St./Bway N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.

Please support the Tank from my website, Steve and the Tank run against Cancer. The Tank and I are once again supporting Fred's Team. The Tank's plea is below.

--------------------------

Dear friends and family, 

    I am running the NYC Marathon again next year.

    I am honored to be running for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as a member of Fred's Team to support The Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research. 

    I am also running in memory of my friend and Deep Water Running Coach, Doug Stern.  Doug courageously battled kidney cancer over the past few months and passed in late June.  I owe him big time as Deep Water Running, running with a floatation device around my waist, helped me rehab while becoming a member of the Seven (Marathon) Continents Club.  Running and fundraising is the least I can do for Doug and others like him.

    At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, doctors and researchers are working on clinical trials that have the potential to increase the survival rates.  For instance, the overall survival rate of children with cancer has increased from 55% to 70% in recent years. 

    My fundraising minimum is $4,500 and I am almost two thirds there at $2,765.  The fundraising deadline is Friday, October 19, 2007.  Yes, this is before the marathon but the deadline was moved up from last year's deadline of December 15, 2006.  If you wish to donate at Sloan-Kettering's secure online server, please use the following hyperlink. 

   If clicking the "Donate" button doesn't work, please copy and past this link https://fredsteam.mskcc.org/fundraising/Controller?action=donateForm&user_id=35640&event_id=53 hyperlink into any Internet browser.  

    Please feel free to share this link with friends, family, co-workers, etc. 

    Thank you very much for your continued support of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  See you at the finish line.

Sincerely,

Tom Djurdjevich

Tom with Cancer survivor Greta Waitz:

Next week I will be speaking at DevReach in Sofia, Bulgaria. This is the second year in a row that Bulgaria has put on this awesome event. I'll be speaking on:

TSQL

BizTalk Services (The Ineternet Service Bus)

Agile Development: Scrum

I'll be speaking at my 10th (maybe more I lost track) SDC in two weeks, speaking on:

Database Design Patterns

XML in SQL Server 2005 & 2008

The Internet Service Bus-WCF, CardSpace, BizTalk Services

Thursday, August 16, 2007 WPF - The Beauty of the Beast
Subject:	You must register at http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=120204 in order to be admitted to the building and attend. The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the user interface subsystem of the .NET 3.0 Framework. Its architecture requires you to rethink how to design and develop in the presentation layer. In this presentation we will explore the exciting new UI framework, learn what capabilities it has, and examine some tools used in WPF development.
Speaker:	Josh Smith, New York Times (TimesReader Team) Josh Smith has been developing desktop applications in C# since the .NET Framework was first released. He was awarded the Microsoft MVP and CodeProject MVP titles in 2007 for his work in the WPF community. Josh has been a WPF fanatic since it was in pre-beta, and has helped share his enthusiasm for WPF with others via CodeProject articles and blog posts. He worked for a couple of years at Infragistics, as a developer in their Windows Forms Development Lab. During that time he became deeply interested in user interface technologies and design. After that he had a brief stint as a software consultant in the financial services industry, but found that it did not tickle his fancy. He did, however, have the rare opportunity to create a WPF application for the Elite Model Management agency, which was shown in a video at the Microsoft Windows Vista launch events. Josh is currently working for the New York Times on their fantastic Times Reader application, which uses WPF for the presentation layer. You can visit his WPF blog at http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com
Date:	Thursday, August 16, 2007
Time:	Reception 6:00 PM , Program 6:15 PM
Location:	Microsoft , 1290 Avenue of the Americas (the AXA building - bet. 51st/52nd Sts.) , 6th floor
Directions:	B/D/F/V to 47th-50th Sts./Rockefeller Ctr 1 to 50th St./Bway N/R/W to 49th St./7th Ave.