The NYC .NET Developer Group Code Camp III went off great. Thanks to our sponsors Infragistics and Code Project. Even though we had 7 inches of snow predicted, all the speakers showed up and we had well over 200 attendees and gave away a lot of SWAG. We rounded off the day with a .NET Rocks interview of the NJ (not NY!) user group/MVP community. (I called it the Jersey Boys crash the NY code camp!) I made Carl ask them each which exit they are from. (That is an inside NY joke. <g>) On the heels of our successful code camp, we are doing our normal monthly meeting this week! Since I did not speak at Code Camp and we were so busy planning code camp, we figured that I can do the talk on Thursday so save planning. Here goes:

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Data Access Hacks and Shortcuts

You *must* register for this event:

Registration site: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=134659
Event Code: 134659

Subject: 
Struggling with Data Access? Who isn’t? Come and see some Data Access hacks and shortcuts that will make your life easier! In a high energy demo-only session, Stephen shows: how a mere mortal can pass a custom .Net collection to a stored procedure, improves your LINQ queries with Lambdas and expression trees, making complex data models easier to manage in the Entity Framework, creative Sliverlight databinding with LINQ to REST, and transforming your database back end to get enormous performance and productivity enhancements. This is data access for the 21st century! Speaker will also provide guidance along the way about ORMs, LINQ, and EF and encourage Q&A.

Speaker: 
Stephen Forte, Telerik
Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, a leading vendor in .NET components. He sits on the board of several start-ups including Triton Works and is also a certified scrum master. Prior he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Corzen, Inc, a New York based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Corzen was acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007. 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 application and database development including 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 of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently an MVP, INETA speaker and is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group. Stephen has an MBA from the City University of New York.

Date: 
Thursday, January 15, 2009

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.

Happy New Year! Here are some predictions for 2009 in the Microsoft Software space.

Windows 7 will ship and not be a flop

Microsoft has to counter Apple and the Vista mess. We are expected to get the first and only beta of Windows 7 this week.  I am going to go out and say that Windows 7 will ship in time for the holiday rush at the end of 2009. It will be successful and have an Obama effect, promising change and not being the other guy (Vista).

Microsoft will continue to innovate C# and the CLR based on what Ruby does

I gave up trying to predict what Microsoft will do by listening to them at the PDC (anyone remember Hailstorm? WinFX?) and playing with betas.It is far easier to predict what Microsoft is going to do based on the actions of others. Microsoft is a reactive company, not a proactive company. The joke in vendor community is “First Microsoft tries to steal it. If they can’t steal it they try to buy it. If they can’t buy it, then they try to copy it.” While this is a cheap shot (and also accurate), there are merits to Microsoft’s strategy. They are never the first mover to anything and therefore don’t suffer from the mistakes of the first mover and can build innovative technology that is responsive to the marketplace. In business school they call this the “second mover advantage.” It seems to fit Microsoft well, they are one of the most profitable companies on the planet and I don’t expect them to change this strategy. If you want accurate predictions on .NET 4.0, 4.5, and beyond, check out what is going on in the Ruby and RoR projects.

ASP .NET MVC Framework will ship and have a very low adoption rate

How low? Both guys will leave a comment on my blog.

The marketing hype around Azure will be equally annoying as the marketing hype around “.NET Web Services” in 2002

Enough said.

LINQ to SQL Fans will start a petition to bring it back from the dead

Anyone still think that Linq to SQL is not dead just because it is in the framework? The VB 6 runtime is part of the Operating System and it is dead. (PS-Don’t mistake my saying L2S as being dead as an endorsement for the EF. I will follow up with a blog post later on this topic)

The Alt.NET “movement” (have you ever seen developers move?) will kick out Scott Bellware

Most of the alt.neters are guys who just want to write code and want Microsoft to support their way of working (BDD, TDD, DDD, etc) with better tooling and support for non-MS stuff (nHibernate, etc). Scott Bellware, who recently called .NET developers “stupid” while admitting that he doesn’t even code in .NET anymore, is a bad face for this group of people. Expect to see an Alt.net Vote of No Confidence pop up this summer….

--Thanks Guntherb for the SQL Query!

with FirstTable as (select top 14 row_number() over (order by name) therow from master.sys.objects)
, SecondTable as (select replicate(char(32),15) theLine)
, ThirdTable as (Select replicate(char(124),3) theOtherLine)
, ForthTable as (
select  (
select left(db_name(4),1) ) + (
select substring(db_name(2),2,1) ) + (
Select replicate(substring(db_name(1),6,1),2) ) + (
Select replace(schema_name(4),'s','') ) + (
select char(max_length * 2)  from master.sys.types where system_type_id = 36) + (
select top 1 substring(wait_type,10,2) from master.sys.dm_os_wait_stats where wait_type like 'PageIo%' ) + (
Select substring(@@version,4,1) ) + (
Select substring(object_name(55),4,2) ) + (
Select convert(char(1),(reverse(convert(char(7),name)))) from sys.configurations where configuration_id = 124 ) + (
Select left(db_name(1),3) ) theEnd
)
select case  therow
      when 11 then stuff( theLine,(datalength(theLine)/2) - 1,3,TheOtherLine)
      when 13 then upper(theEnd )
      else stuff( theLine,(datalength(theLine)/2) - (theRow/2),therow,replicate(char(42),therow)) end ' '
from firstTable
cross join SecondTable
cross join ThirdTable
cross join ForthTable
where therow%2!=0

Thursday, December 18, 2008
Developing Business Applications with Microsoft Cloud Services

Subject: 
You must register at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=132234 in order to be admitted to the building and attend.
At PDC Microsoft announced the Azure Cloud Services Platform. This presentation will cover the key features of the Windows Azure operating system that make it possible to build applications leveraging the distributed computation and storage capabilities in the cloud. It will also cover higher-layer .NET Services such as the Service Bus, Federated Identity Management, and cloud-based Workflow as well as SQL Data Services, the cloud based database. We will demonstrate how to build applications that leverage the cloud using the familiar development environment of Visual Studio.

Speaker: 
Bill Zack, Microsoft
Bill Zack is an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft. He comes to this role after serving as a Solutions Architect in the Financial Services Group of Microsoft Consulting Services. His experience includes developing, supporting and evangelizing .NET/SOA based frameworks used to jump-start development projects for financial services companies.
Prior to joining Microsoft he acted as a Consultant, Architect, Administrator, Developer, and System Integrator. He has also authored several computer books and white papers.
He is the Founder and President of the New York chapter of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) and a member of the IASA Board of Directors He is also Co-Moderator of the New York City .NET Developers Group, founder and past president of the New York Enterprise Windows User Group, and the founder and past president of several other computer user groups.

Date: 
Thursday, December 18, 2008

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.

The New York City Code Camp is planned for Saturday January 10th. We have had an open call for speakers and are going to close it out over this weekend. If you want to be considered to speak, please do send a proposal now.

Please send your session abstracts by Sunday December 14th to:
proposalsnyc@codecamp.us

Please create a word doc named yourlastname_abstract01.doc and mail it to proposalsnyc@codecamp.us.
Replace 01 with 02 if you have more than 1 abstract. Replace yourlastname with your real last name. (I have to say this, you would
be surprised. <g>) Put in the doc:

Name:
Session Title:
Audience/Track:
Level:
Abstract:
Demos:
Demo 1 blah blah
Bio:

Registration will be announced at http://nyc.codecamp.us/ soon.

Cloud computing, Software plus services, Windows Azure, SQL Services, Live Services, Windows 7,  Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0 Framework, etc, etc….  Did you miss all of the news coming out of the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles last month? Or, maybe you caught some of it, but were so overwhelmed by the fire hose of information, you weren’t able to digest it all?  (My brain is STILL on overload from all the new technology announcements & demos.)

Have no fear, if you weren’t able to make it to the PDC, now is your opportunity to learn about all of the latest developer technologies from Microsoft in a city near you!  A fantastic series of one-day conferences is coming to 11 cities across the US.  The MSDN Developer Conference features 12 sessions in three tracks:

1. Cloud Services
   Use Windows Azure, Live Mesh, and more to create apps that bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone

2. Client and Presentation
   See the state of the art and future plans for ASP.NET 4.0, WPF, and Silverlight

3. Tools, Languages and Framework
   Learn about Visual Studio 2010, Language Futures, Oslo, and Parallel Programming

Think of this as the greatest hits of PDC coming to you!

A full day of content for $99.  And of course some nice giveaways as well.

New York City’s Turn

As one of the 11 cities in the series, our local event will be in New York City on January 20th at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. 

We have a great line-up of speakers on tap for New York, including:

• Me :)
• Bill Zack
• Don Demsak
• Todd Snyder
• Jess Chadwick
• Sajee Mathew
• Allan Da Costa Pinto
• Dmitry Lyalin
• And more to be announced soon!

The Sessions

Cloud Services
Client and Presentation
Tools, Languages and Framework

Lap Around Cloud Services
Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) Roadmap
The Future of Managed Languages: F#, C#, and Visual Basic

Developing and Deploying Your First Cloud Services
Developing Data-centric Applications WPF
A Lap Around "Oslo" (I am presenting)

A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services
Building Business Focused Applications using Silverlight 2
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: A Lap Around VSTS 2010

Developing Applications Using Data Services (I am presenting)
ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap
Parallel Programming for Managed Code Developers

Registration is now open, and a nice deal for $99.

If you missed the MVC Fire Starters in New York and Philadelphia over the past few months, I’m happy to announce that the ASP.NET MVC Fire Starter is coming to central Jersey next Saturday, December 13th.  This is your opportunity to come out and learn about the new ‘old’ way of building web applications on ASP.NET!  Feedback from the New York & Philly events were great.  Due to popular demand for this topic, we’re bringing the content to Jersey.

Thanks to Infragistics, we are able to host the Fire Starter at their headquarters in East Windsor, NJ.  If you’re from north or south Jersey, this is smack in the middle of the state right off Exit 8 on the NJ Turnpike.  So come on out for a full day of learning about MVC.  The ASP.NET MVC framework recently reached official beta status (after 5 ‘preview’ releases over the past year).  The content has been tweaked and updated based on feedback from Philly & New York. 

REGISTER HERE!!! Location: Infragistics Corporate Headquarters Windsor Corporate Park 50 Millstone Road Auditorium Building 100 East Windsor, NJ 08520 Saturday, December 13, 2008 9:30 AM–5:00 PM

When it comes to design patterns, the MVC is the granddaddy of them all.  First described in the late 70s, the MVC pattern remains very popular in the world of web applications today.  

ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display.
ASP.NET MVC is not a replacement for Webforms. It provides an alternative choice when designing a Web application. Using ASP.NET MVC offers the following advantages:

• It enables you to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns
• It facilitates test driven development (TDD)
• It provides more control over the URLs you publish in the application and over the HTML that is emitted by the application

At the ASP.NET MVC Firestarter, we’ll give you a quick tour of the framework, then peel back the layers and dive deeper into how it works.   As part of that, we’ll spend time discussing the design and development practices that lead to the creation of the MVC framework.  By the time you leave, you’ll have enough knowledge to get fired up and start building web applications with it.

Detailed Agenda:

• ASP.NET MVC Introduction
  • The MVC Design Pattern
  • Hello World Demo – Walking through routing, controllers, and views
• Framework Fundamentals & Practices
  • C# 3.0 Primer
    • Anonymous Classes
    • Lambda Expressions
    • Extention Methods
    • LINQ
  • Dependency Injection
• Routing & Controllers
  • Routing 101
  • Controllers – Actions & ActionResults
  • Controllers & TDD
• Rendering Markup
  • Views (using WebForm tools)
  • Extensibility with View Engines
• Working with Data
  • Creating & Submitting Forms
  • UI Helpers
• Building Rich Web Interfaces
  • Applying AJAX Helper extensions
  • Walkthrough of ASP.NET AJAX + MVC Extensions
  • Enhancing MVC with jQuer
  • Action Filters & applying to AJAX

Ever since the release of the Entity Framework and the Linq to SQL team’s move to the ADO.NET team we have been hearing about Linq to SQL being dead. The ADO.NET team (which owns the EF as well) released the roadmap where they said:

“We’re making significant investments in the Entity Framework such that as of .NET 4.0 the Entity Framework will be our recommended data access solution for LINQ to relational scenarios.  We are listening to customers regarding LINQ to SQL and will continue to evolve the product based on feedback we receive from the community as well.”

This caused an uproar as you might imagine. So a few days later Tim Mallalieu, PM of the Linq to SQL and Linq to EF teams clarified by saying this:

“We will continue make some investments in LINQ to SQL based on customer feedback. This post was about making our intentions for future innovation clear and to call out the fact that as of .NET 4.0, LINQ to Entities will be the recommended data access solution for LINQ to relational scenarios….We also want to get your feedback on the key experiences in LINQ to SQL that we need to add in to LINQ to Entities in order to enable the same simple scenarios that brought you to use LINQ to SQL in the first place.”

Sounds pretty dead to me. If you don’t believe me, just talk to any Fox Pro developer, VB 6 developer, or any Access developer who loves the Jet engine. They are still “supported” as well. As this has shaken out over the past month or so, there are two camps:

I told you so! and No way man, it is part of the framework, it will be supported for 10 years!

Well they are both wrong.

The I told you so crowd is claiming victory. While Linq to SQL may be dead,  Linq to SQL has a lot of traction in the developer community. According to Data Direct Technologies’s recent .NET Data Access Trends Survey (November 24th, 2008), 8.5% of production .NET applications use Linq to SQL as their primary data access method. While this number is not huge, you can’t ignore these developers voting with their feet by using Linq to SQL in their applications.

The “It is in the Framework” crowd also has it wrong. Just because something is in the Framework does not mean it will have a bright future. Windows Forms is in the framework and WPF is the “preferred” UI for Windows apps. ADO.NET is in the framework and Linq to SQL and EF are suppose to replace that?  Is anyone using System.Object anymore, or are we all using Generics?

So what should the Linq to SQL developer do? Throw it all away and learn EF? Use nHibernate?

No. The Linq to SQL developer should continue to use Linq to SQL for the time being. If the next version of the EF is compelling enough for a Linq to SQL developer to move to EF, their investment in Linq to SQL is transferrable to Linq to Entities. If Linq to SQL developers are to move in the future, Microsoft will have to provide a migration path, guidance, and tools/wizards. (The EF team has started this process with some blog posts, but the effort has to be larger and more coordinated.) When should the Linq to SQL Developers move to the EF? When this happens:

• The EF feature set is a superset of the Linq to SQL feature set
• Microsoft provides migration wizards and tools for Linq to SQL developers

If Microsoft is serious about the Entity Framework being the preferred data access solution in .NET 4.0, why will have to do a few things:

• Make EF 2.0 rock solid. Duh.
• Explain to us why the EF is needed. What is the problem that the EF is solving? Why is EF a better solution to this problem? This  My big criticism of the EF team, the feedback I gave them at the EF Council meeting, is that they are under the assumption that “build it they will come” and have not provided the compelling story as to why one should use EF. Make that case to us!
• Engage with the Linq to SQL crowd. This group can continue to provide feedback to the EF team since Linq to SQL has many features that EF/Linq to Entities needs.
• Engage with the nHibernate crowd. Data Direct Technologies’s survey says that 18% of all .NET production applications use a framework like nHibernate, Open Access, or Spring.NET. (they also included ASP AJAX in this question, which is strange to me.) While you may not win all of these people over, you should find out what they like about their tools.
• Engage with the “stored procedure” crowd.  The EF team on several occasions said that “Nobody is building an application using stored procedures and straight ADO anymore.” According to Data Direct Technologies’s survey, almost 65% of .NET developers are using straight Stored Procedures and ADO.NET and 14% are using the Enterprise Library, which is just a wrapper for SPs and ADO.NET. I am not attacking or defending this architectural decision, but the EF team has to realize that if this many of their customers are using this approach and there needs to be guidance, training, and migration tools, not to mention a compelling reason to move to EF.

How will this shake out? I can’t tell you since I have no idea.The EF team (and nHibernate crowd) talk like the train has arrived at the destination already while in reality it has not even left the station. We are still at the station buying tickets (to an unknown destination). Stay tuned.