 Monday, June 30, 2003
And The Winner Is No No I Cant Tell You That Yet It Is Secret EMEA VP A Hrefhttpwwwmicro
And the Winner is...
No no I can't tell you that yet, it is secret. EMEA VP Jean-Philippe Courtois will announce the winner of the Imagine Cup tomorrow at the Keynote. I saw all 15 teams and it was great. I am tired, I had to get a 20 minute demo from each team from 10am until 5pm.
I will be quoted tomorrow in the MS Press Release on the Imagine Cup, so look for that. Keeping this to myself is KILLING me. :)
What I liked is that the UK team were 1st year Java students and used .NET for the Cup. Now they are CONVERTS. This is a big win for Microsoft, getting .NET in front of students, if only University CS departments were not so biased. This is a big problem, Universities pretend that Microsoft doesn't exist and like it or not, Microsoft is a huge player in the Real World. The Universities are doing their students a real disservice. All I am asking for is a more balanced curriculum!
Let The Games Begin The Long Awaited FONT FaceVerd
Let the Games Begin!
The long awaited Imagine Cup has begun here at TechED Europe in Barcelona. So far so good, the students are motivated and the Web Services look cool. I have already looked at the teams from Australia, India, USA, Japan, France, Russina and Germany. Stay tuned!!
Sunday, June 29, 2003
xmlnamespace
Istanbul, Istanbul, Istanbul-Rome?
That is what the Tunisian customs agent asked Nasser Ghazi, Goksin Bakir, Selcuk Uzun and I as we stood in customs on our departure from Tunis. Nasser had the idea that we all travel through the customs together, so the customs agent was confused since Nasser, Goskin and Selcuk all were traveling to Istanbul and I was traveling to Rome. I tried to explain that by Monday night we all would be in Barcelona together. Needless to say we got through and began our journey to TechEd.
I have arrived in Spain for TechEd and the Imagine Cup. I have always been committed to Universities (see yesterday's blog), so the Imagine Cup is special for me. Tonight is dinner with the other judges (I think there are 5 of us from around the world) and the organizers of the event. The competition gets heated tomorrow (Monday June 30.) You can follow here in my blog or you can check out the team specs here.
Saturday, June 28, 2003
FONT FaceVerdanaGenevaArialHelvetic
Microsoft and the Developing World (Social Responsibility)
The North African Developers Conference 2003 ended today. In a region where Microsoft estimates that there are only 5,000 developers, we had 1,000 developers attend. How about that reach! It was so successful that Microsoft will do it again next year in Marrakech, Morocco. On the heels of the success last week of the PDC in Karachi, Pakistan (1,400 attendees) and this week in Tunis (1,000 attendees), I have seen Microsoft success in the developing world and a momentum is there.
Nasser Khan Ghazi, who is in charge of Microsoft evangelism for MEA or Middle East and Africa has now vowed to make these events annual and build off their successes. We discussed the rate of mobility adoption in Sub-Saharan African and contemplated an African Mobility Tour as well as events in the Middle East, South Africa, Istanbul, and Jordan.
What is great was the amount of students attending the conference. (I have a special love for bringing current technology to Academia, hence my involvement with the Imagine Cup in Spain next week.) I was speaking to a few students in Tunis (many were female) and they all inspired me with their drive and dedication. I also spoke at length with a Professor of Computer Science from Algeria about the pros and cons of the western content in the Middle East. We decided that it is a two way street, while Microsoft has great content in English and sometimes even localized in French and Arabic, the Universities need to pitch in some more. And he was practicing what we decided since he came from Algeria to Tunis for the conference.
Nasser and I talked about a Microsoft plan to take one developing country (Pakistan and Nigeria are the frontrunners) and making it a model for investment by Microsoft (and others). I believe that Microsoft has a social responsibility to lead by example, which they clearly have every intention of doing. Bill Gates has chosen MEA as the area to start this focus. This can only be win win for Microsoft and the region. Microsoft will of course see a longer term financial benefit, but the main objective here is social responsibility. The developing world will of course gain in the investment (especially countries like Iraq and Afghanistan which are emerging out of years of hardship and recent war.)
The plan is good because it is all about empowering people with technology in schools, libraries, women centers, and poor areas. Evangelism and education for current and future developers would also be very important (that means more travel for me). Then use that example as a showcase for the region. Right now it is a plan on paper, who knows where it will go. I am optimistic. I am glad that I can play a small part in this initiative.
Some Fun time...
After my sessions yesterday I also visited Carthage. Then I had dinner last night with Andrew (and his wife Laruen), Clemens, Malek and Nasser. We chatted about the developing world, BizTalk, Indigo, .NET Branding, and the RD program. We also talked about the upcomming Imagine Cup in Spain. Today was a free day in Tunis, visited some great sites. The medina, or city, is a wealth of ancient palaces, mosques and centers of trade and learning, truly a living museum.
Friday, June 27, 2003
DataGrid Nirvana P ClassMsoNormal StyleMARGIN 0in 0in 0
DataGrid Nirvana
Last night us RDs went to a traditional North African sheesha (looks like a fancy bong) bar to smoke fancy tobacco. We even got Andrew Brust to smoke out of it (apple flavored tobacco)! All done with my sessions, so Goksin and I will go visit historic Carthage.
North African developers love the ASP .NET DataGrid. My session, Asp .Net DataGrid Drill Down (Code and Slide Download) was so much fun and fun was had by all. The sorting code went over very well. here is the code we spent the most time on:
private void SortGrid(object source,DataGridSortCommandEventArgs e)
{
//SQL String that will be used
string strSQL = "Select * From Customers";
//the Order By
string strOrderBy = "ASC";
//See what the viewstate has for the sortfield and ASC/DESC
if (e.SortExpression.ToString() == ViewState["sortField"].ToString())
{
//a match, see if ASC or DESC
strOrderBy = ViewState["sortDirection"].ToString();
//now toggle the viewstate for later
switch (strOrderBy)
{
case "ASC":
ViewState["sortDirection"] = "DESC";
break;
case "DESC":
ViewState["sortDirection"] = "ASC";
break;
}
}
else
{
//New Field, so it will be ASC by default, so make DESC
ViewState["sortField"] = e.SortExpression.ToString();
ViewState["sortDirection"] = "DESC";
}
//SQL statement compelted
strSQL = strSQL + " " + " ORDER BY [" + e.SortExpression + "] " + strOrderBy;
//set the grid to the first page before you resort
DataGrid1.CurrentPageIndex = 0;
//call the FillGrid method to rebind the grid w/ new OrderBy
FillGrid(strSQL);
}
Thursday, June 26, 2003
North African Developers Conferencexmlnamespace Prefix O Ns
North African Developers Conference
Day 1 of the North African Developers Conference and I have to say that North African developers were either very polite or liked my jokes! (Well Bill Gates is such an easy target!). Translation was not a problem, I started in Arabic (which lasted about 2 minutes), switched to French which lasted about 2 seconds and then to English. I talked SLOW, yes slow. It was hard talking like a normal person, but hey it worked.
Developers were very interested in SQL Server Merge Replication in my Using SQL Server CE & SDE to build Enterprise Solutions talk. The Using Regular Expressions in Windows Forms & ASP.NET (Code and Slide Download) this afternoon went very well. ASP .NET validation controls were very popular as well as this code to remove HTML:
public string RemoveHTML(string strHTML)
{
//Using the \ escape inside the string
string strPattern = "<(\"[^\"]*\"|'[^']*'|[^'\">])*>";
//create a new RegEx as a pattern
Regex rxReplace = new Regex(strPattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
//do the replacement
string strNoTag = rxReplace.Replace(strHTML, "");
//return the string w/o the HTML in it
return strNoTag;
}
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
This Doesn't Suck!
A good start to this trip with an uneventful trans-Atlantic flight. Even bumped into fellow NY RD Andrew Brust and his lovely wife Lauren in the Rome airport. Worked on converting my Using SQL Server CE & SDE to build Enterprise Solutions code from VB .NET to C# on the plane down to Tunis. After clearing customs, Malek picked Goksin, Selcuk and I up and drove us on down to the Hotel where Clemens was already waiting for us. What was great was that there were North African Developers Conference posters and signs all over the airport and highway! Tunisia really rolled out the red carpet.
Reunited from the Wallflowers in Dallas, Clemens, Goksin, Malek and I turned around and headed straight for the beach at Hammamet. Much to the delight of the German speakers in the group, Clemens and I (barely), we were at a resort that catered to Germans. We spend several hours on the beach smoking Goksin's Turkish cigars, drinking beer and talking about why .NET Remoting may or may not suck, DCOM, the bowls of COM+, Regular Expressions and gulp politics. Clemens and I had a disagreement over the difference between an 'Ocean' and a 'Sea' (eventually we got distracted by some girls topless sunbathing.) I got a great swim workout in, about 20-25minutes in open water. Triathlon training won't suffer (well the several beers I drank after my workout may have hurt a little.)
So, when you code, remember a bug is always your fault. This code in SQL Server CE may look harmless, but if you are pointing to the wrong database (ha!) it won't do a damn thing!
SqlCeConnection cn = new SqlCeConnection("data source=\\my documents\\bya.sdf");
SqlCeDataReader dr;
cn.Open();
SqlCeCommand cmd = new SqlCeCommand(strSQL, cn);
So off to the speakers dinner at a nice place overlooking the Med. Tomorrow are two sessions:
11:00-12:00: Using SQL Server CE & SDE to build enterprise solutions
4:00-5:00: Using Regular Expressions in Windows Forms & ASP.NET (Code and Slide Download)
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
assal%c3%a2mu
'as-salâmu alaykum
Just about to leave for the airport and fly to Rome, then backtrack to Tunis. Away from New York for 2 weeks (As much as I love it here, I could use a break from the constant rain anyway).
I will be presenting at the North African Developers Conference in Tunis later this week from June 26-28. This is my third time to Africa in the last 28 months and the second time this year. I am so unprepared from a travel standpoint: I have no local currency and dont know if I have the correct power adapters. But it will all work out due to technology. Compare this to foreign travel 15 years ago without ATMs, GSM cell phones and high-speed internet at your hotel.
After the conference, I will also have a free day to go and see the historic Carthage (I plan on dragging Clemens and Malek with me), sure sure it was raped and pillaged by the Romans two thousand years ago and there is nothing there, but I am the History buff so there. Then on Sunday I fly off to Barcelona and then judge the Imagine Cup and speak at TechED Europe (July 1-July 4).
The hotel in Tunisia looks nice, I just hope that I can find the time to ride my bike, but it looks like swimming in the Med wont be a problem. Cant wait to catch up with my fellow Microsoft Regional Directors that are speaking there, off the top of my head the other RDs that are speaking in Tunis are:
In Tunis I will be presenting (with the help of an Arabic translator):
June 26th from 11:00-12:00: Using SQL Server CE & SDE to build enterprise solutions
June 26th from 4:00-5:00: Using Regular Expressions in Windows Forms & ASP.NET (Code and Slide Download)
June 27th from 11:00-12:00: Asp .Net DataGrid Drill Down (Code and Slide Download)
Ok, first of all, I talk fast and my French sucks (actually I think my Arabic may be better. 'ismî stephen, 'anâ sâ'ih. wa-mâ 'uhibbu 'akthar huwa 'ash-shacri l-'ashqar maca l-hawâjibi s-sawda'). That is gonna be bad for the translator. Second, the sessions are only 1 hour long and I have the standard 75 minutes of material. Stay tuned to see how it turned out! Either way, the sessions are going to be lots of fun and we will geek out at lot. See you all in Africa
.
No Title
New York State Regents Exams
Every year in New York State, High School students take a state-wide exam called the Regents in various topics. My mom and dad were high school Social Studies teachers. I have an advanced degree in History and Political Science. Needless to say that we are into this stuff a little. (Much to the disdain of my older Sister.)
So each year we have a strange tradition, my dad brings home the Regents exam after it is given and we take it on the dining room table. It is a little competition each year. (Bonus year was 1994 when I taught Summer School at Prep and we got to take two exams that summer, I think even Jack took part in that years silliness.) We take the sophomore Global Studies and the Junior American Government, 50 questions each. Out of 100, the competition this year came down to:
Stephen 100
Dad 99
Mom 97
Not too shabby. Maybe if this computer thing doesnt work out, I can teach High School Social Studies!
Monday, June 23, 2003
Wanted A Dutch Tutorxmlnamespace Pref
Wanted: A Dutch Tutor
I need to learn Dutch. I do a lot of business in the Netherlands. I also have too many friends in the Netherlands that constantly mock me in Dutch. Then they go Dutch on me in IM like so:
[09:18] Kim: nee daar zit je goed
[09:19] Kim: vierdaagse feesten is echt wel super als je met een leuke groep bent op donderdag, vrijdag of zaterdag en mooi weer hebt
[09:19] Kim: echt super sfeer
[09:19] Reminator (The): eens maar als import nijmegenaar wordt het niks
[09:19] Reminator (The): net als carnaval boven de rivieren
[09:20] PeakBagger: Stop with the Dutch.
[09:20] Reminator (The): ik snap heel goed dat het dolle pret kan zijn
[09:20] Kim: nou ja; juist bij de vierdaagsefeesten zijn er mensen uit het hele land en de rest van de wereld daar
[09:20] Hello American here who cant speak Dutch
SPAN StyleFONTSIZE 10pt FONTFAMILY
Bad Relationships
I have a lot of bad relationships in my life. Several come to mind immediately: American Airlines, Chase Manhattan bank, American Express and few ex-girlfriends and ex-clients. My relationship with my teammate Tom Halligan, while good for so many reasons (including the triathlons), is not good for my relationship with alcohol. No, no I wont torture you with the details of my 3pm to midnight 9+ hour party like a rock star drinking binge that ended with me passing out on his sofa. (I hope that Scott Hanselman did not just read that.) Apparently at some point I exchanged cell phones numbers/email addresses with the waitress-when did this scene get so high-tech? At least we woke at some point on Sunday and rode 40K in the park (with a lot of stops for water bottle refill).
Anyway, I digress. The worst bad relationship in my life has to be my relationship with Microsoft Outlook, and particularly Outlook 2003 beta 2. This is like one of those abusive relationships that you know that you just have to cut the cord, but youre just in too deep and you just cant bring yourself to do it and you continue to live in pain. You mean so much to me you say. You have that feeling that there just is nobody out there that you will ever feel the same about. Sounding familiar? I love Outlook 2003 for so many reasons. Tops have to be the preview pane. The new UI is just oh so sexy. The junk filter works like a charm.
So why the love-hate? Well it is slow and crashes a few times a day. I mean, like about 5 times a day, easy. I have traced the source of some of my crashes to the using of Word as my email editor. But since Andrew Brust convinced me that my constant typos are unprofessional looking, I HAVE to use Word integration. I am addicted. See the love-hate?
So what do we do, not install betas? Stop, we are techies you know. But the beta is soooooo good. At the same time it is soooooo bad, so does that just cancel it out? Techies are just so hungry for betas, we will install just about any piece of crap Microsoft gives us. I know that when this is released to the real world, it will rock the house and my constant bug reports to Microsoft even helps that process. So I guess what I am saying is that we are all adults and made the decision to install the betas, so no complaining!
Now isnt that the pot calling the kettle black
..
Sunday, June 22, 2003
41 Students 14 Teams 12 Countries 4 Co
41 students, 14 teams, 12 countries, 4 continents, 1 judge
The first annual international academic coding competition or Imagine Cup will take place June 29-July 1th at Tech*Ed in Barcelona. I am the judge and cant wait to meet all of these bright young students and their killer Web Services. Good luck to all and stay tuned to this blog for more on the competition.
We are going to judge the students on:
- Innovation and Creativity - 25%
- Implementation of .NET and Web Services - 25%
- Overall Presentation - 25%
- Social Responsibility or Commercial Viability - 25%
In addition, something that will be important to me as a judge is how the teams worked together (I guess this falls in the Overall Presentation part.)
Toss Me AnbspBone Honeyxmlnamesp
Toss Me a Bone Honey....
I have been told by a friend that my use of this expression is getting kinda old. So I will have to give it up. (I am sure that I will pick up something new in Tunisia or Spain.) Before I do that, I am going to use it one last time.
So my company has a Pocket PC (SDE/CF) application that uses a local SQL Server CE on the device with Merge Replication back with an enterprise SQL Server Publication. I have lots of experience making this work, and it works well. I wont bash the Microsoft SQL Server CE, .NET CF, SDE teams at all.
My problem is that at the office I have this all set up properly. We have a dedicated SQL Server production box and a dedicated IIS box. Life is good. Where things go bad is that I hired a developer who knows nothing about SQL Server CE, SDE, CF, etc, so I am setting up a local sandbox for him to play with while I am in Tunisia and Spain. My goal is to give him the TechEd lab demos created by Kevin Collins, myself and others over the years. Setting up merge replication with a backend SQL Server to a device is pretty easy. The steps are as follows:
- Install the SQL Server CE Server Tools on a IIS and SQL Server Machine(s)
- Install the SQL Server CE Developer Tools on a Developer Workstation
- Install Active Sync 3.5 or higher on the Developer Workstation
- Install Visual Studio 2003 (make sure the SDE option is checked in VB & C#) on the Developer Workstation
- Create a New Publication of your database via Enterprise Manager-make sure that this publication is for SQL Server CE and is set up for merge replication
- Run the SQL Server CE Server Tools to configure a Virtual Directory on IIS for the Pocket PC Client to talk to via code
- You do have to make sure that the proper security is set up fro the IUSER_MachineName account, a great security white paper is here.
- Create a new Smart Device Application in VS 2003
- Programmatically create a database on the device and then sync it back to the backend publication like so:
Dim ceRep As New SqlCeReplication
With ceRep
.Publisher = "KILIMANJARO"
.PublisherDatabase = "BYA_Data"
.PublisherLogin = "sa"
.PublisherPassword = ""
.Publication = "BYA_Data_CE"
.Subscriber = "SQLCENETCFLab"
.SubscriberConnectionString = _ "Provider=Microsoft.SQLServer.OLEDB.CE.2.0;Data Source=\my documents\mycooldatabase.sdf"
.InternetUrl = "http://KILIMANJARO/SSCE_DLL/sscesa20.dll"
'Bring down initial subscription
.Synchronize()
End With
So I have done this a zillion times, install Visual Studio on the development machine along with the SQL Server CE development tools and I am off to the races. This part of course went smooth, except for the fact that I want to sandbox the machine and run everything off it all at once. So I have to make sure IIS 5.0 and SQL Server standard or enterprise is running. Simple you say, just install the SQL Server CE server tools as well on the same machine. The problem is that it took me about two hours to set this up (I have done this a hundred times in less than 15 minutes) because of SERVICE PACK HELL. Basically the server tools would not install since the IIS and SQL Server service packs were too current for the installer on my machine. I did not have to roll back the SPs (that is good!), but I had to dig around and find new installs from Microsoft.
So Microsoft, please TOSS ME A FRIGGIN BONE here. Get rid of all of the old install drops and just require SQL Server SP3 to install anything-or create a better error message! I am not asking for much. This is such great technology, I dont want people to be discouraged from using it due to poor locations of downloads.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
I Finally Did Itxmlnamespace Prefix
I finally did it!
I finally broke 20 minutes for the 10 km bike course at Central Park. The stats: 19:49 minutes, 6.4 miles (slightly more than 10K) at 19.1 mph average speed.
What was the secret? Well for starters, it was raining so the circuit was less crowded, meaning no psycho rollarbladers trying to kill me. (Dont take offence rollarbladers, I am one of you weeknights.) Second was my built up frustration at Microsoft SQL Server Merge Replication-more on that tomorrow
Friday, June 20, 2003
The Microsoft NET Evagelism Team All I Can Say Is That They Rock Eileen Crain Is One Of My Heros
The Microsoft .NET Evagelism Team
All I can say is that they rock. Eileen Crain is one of my heros. Jas Sandhu and I had so much fun in Dallas, he better come to KL!
Listen to them on .NET Rocks, a weekly internet-radio show. (I was on a month or two ago)
Another RD Comes To The Dark Side Xmln
Another RD comes to The Dark Side
Welcome to Blogland Jon Box, Microsoft Regional Director (RD) for Memphis and all around great guy. Jon and I have spent a good amount of time together on campus earlier this year for RD meetings and last year for CF Labs. He tolerates me-so he is ok in my book. J Cant wait to read his blog with all of his CF experience.
User Group Heaven
Speaking of RDs, Ken Getz was in the house last night as the speaker for our .NET Users Group in New York. Besides Andrew and myself, we had Boston RD Patrick Hynds in attendance as well as two of the local Microsoft office DEs, Paul Groves and Jim Williams-so people got answers to their questions!
Ken is a true rock star, every time I think that I am getting good at this speaking thing, Ken comes and blows me away with something. Last night was truly fabulous, people came from as far away as Albany and Boston to see Ken last night. At the high point, we have Id guess well over 135 people standing room only in the Yankee room at Microsoft to hear Ken. Ken spoke on Inheritance in Windows Forms (and mocked me in his slides-story of my life) and really captivated the audience.
All in attendance got a free MS Press book courtesy of Microsoft. There was even spontaneous applause for Microsoft! Giving the books and other goodies away at the break reminded me of the Baghdad looting shots on TV, what is it with developers with 6 figure incomes swarming over each other in a mad frenzy to get a $4 tee-shirt for free?
Why are developers cheap bastards? I guess it is in our nature.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Dont Go Changing To Try And Please Me Yesterday I Spoke At A Hrefhttpwwwcebitamericacom
Don't go Changing to try and Please me..
Yesterday I spoke at CeBIT North America and did two sessions: "Patching the holes in the Change Management Process" and "Extreme XML-Interoperability in Action".
This got me to talking with attendees about my favorite topics on change management, EMBRACING CHANGE. Way too many developers fight it, hate it and die by it. I have seen whole applications die over fighting change. Let's face it: CHANGE IS PART OF DEVELOPMENT.
At Zagat we embarked on a new initiative to build the company a new electronic on-line editorial systems. The old way of doing things was 100% paper based. So this was a radical change for the business. The business had no clue what they wanted, nor was the changing competitive landscape clear. So change was going to be a part of this system in a major way. But time to market was very important since we were preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
I told my lead architect that when he was designing version 1.0 of the "CMS" or Content Management System, that I will not evaluate him by how cool Version 1.0 is or how 1.0 is accepted by the business. I will evaluate him by how fast 2.0 is built on top of 1.0's base architecture. Now that was a challenge. Designing a system for change in the first place! This affected the entire culture about change management. Change was embraced.
But how to control it you may ask? A typical project gets at least a 25% change in requirements during development. Also, a typical project tends to experience a 1%-2% growth in requirements per month-so the longer your project takes, the more change you will have to endure in the way of new requirements.
Now that being said, sometimes you have to be a hard nose on change requests. Shipping is a feature. So how do you strike the delicate balance? That is the million dollar question. (And on some projects the cost is higher.) The answer is all about BUY IN. Get the business aligned with the change culture. Set up a change control board with stakeholders from all over the business. Some of the methods of change control are:
Allow changes that help to produce the best possible product in the time available. Disallow all other changes, even if budget permits.
Allow all affected parties to assess the schedule, resource, and product impacts of the change.
All change requests, assessments and re-estimations must be public.
Get agreement from Business and Development Team on the New Delivery Schedule and Build Plan.
Now the last bullet is most important. After you decide on a major change and alter the schedule by a month, under no circumstances do you say Ok the schedule slips back a month No no no. Bad the word slip in reference to change, slips are when people miss a deadline. When you schedule a change, you are realigning your schedule based on new business reality. Do not perceive this a slip or late. It is a trade off or a compromise. Trust me, this one little thing, changing your attitude on change can change your life! (pun intended)
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
New
New York, NY
"INETA Poster Boy-sort of"
Reuters Technology Director, Microsoft Regional Director for St. Louis and founder of INETA, Bill Evjen was in town last night. So fellow NYC RD, Andrew Brust and I went out on the town with Bill last night. We spent about 5 hours together drinking (there goes that reputation again) and talking about code, Microsoft, INTEA, the cost of developers in Bangkok, user groups, 80s music and eventually politics and women (Bill is married to a Finish national and he admitted that he lets her tell him who to vote for).
What was most amazing was that the huge Reuters electronic billboard in Times Square is #1 the world's largest electronic billboard (bigger than the second largest in the world across the street-the NASDAQ) and #2 runs on Microsoft Windows. Bill said that it has an XML feed to populate the data. This is so cool having such a large public sign run on Windows. I also know that the NASDAQ one runs on Windows as well, making Windows the cool electronic sign technology for Times Square.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
New York NY 5 Unique Sessions 2 Continents 2 Weeks 1 Mediterrane
New York, NY
"5 unique sessions, 2 Continents, 2 weeks, 1 Mediterranean Sea"
Completely hellish work schedule, but could this rock any more for triathlon training? Usually you go away on business for 2 weeks and don't train or complain that there are not places to train. Well I get to spend two weeks in walking distance from the Mediterranean Sea, in Tunis and Barcelona. I will be presenting at the North African Developers Conference next week from June 26-28 and then the week (July 1-July 4) after at TechED Europe.
In Tunis I will be presenting (with the help of an Arabic translator):
Using SQL Server CE & SDE to build enterprise solutions
Using Regular Expressions in Windows Forms & ASP.NET
Asp .Net DataGrid Drill Down
These are fun sessions, I can't wait to deliver them. In Spain at TechED, I will be presenting two sessions for other people, but topics I am very familiar with:
Migrating Your Mission Critical Access Applications to SQL Server (DAT231)
Developing Applications with SQL Server Desktop Edition (MSDE) (DAT307)
These are fun sessions too, and bring me back to my old Jet roots. Kevin Collins, my Mt. Everest and PM of SQL Server CE will be happy to know we are still pushing a white paper we worked on (Jet Performance) in like 1998 in this session!
Monday, June 16, 2003
He Can Drink But Can He Code FONT FaceGenevaA
He can drink, but can he code?
There was a time where I was known for being able to write some kick ass code. When I was 23 years old I use to stay up all night coding and then write an article about it. Id like to think that I am older and wiser. Now I am more concerned with my 10K splits in the 40K bike event. But it seems that my old age is catching up with me, because now I have more of a reputation for partying and drinking. First Eileen Crain put me in charge of the party at TechED in Dallas and now Scott Hanselman today called me his hero, not because I can code, but because I can drink (just click on his name and see what I am talking about). So I feel that I have to rebut a little, I mean come on cut me some slack, I HAVE written code that BillG has demoed!
First of all, my internal clock is screwed up. As you all know I am in training for some triathlons. I have been getting up way too early to run in the park to run with a new running partner. She has to be back home at 7am, yes 7am, so I get up at 5:20 to start running at 5:45 with her. (Kathleen please quit your job so we can run later in the day.) Why do I run with her? Well she is FAST but also very motivated and it is hard to find a partner willing to run in the rain and such (ok, ok she is pretty damn cute too.) But this presents a problem for me. I am not an early bird. But I am also a light sleeper so I can't go back to sleep. So I spent from 7am to about noon just coding my brains out (no email or IM); then burnt out and did nothing but eat, IM people and rollerblade in the park all day. (Also had a huge 9oz Wyoming juicy burger with my lead dev, Al Cadalzo (who paid!), for lunch at Jackson Hole,). But I digress, so let's review my Monday morning:
I started with a few thousand lines of TSQL code (like every Monday nowadays it seems) and automated my company's data push of some new data. Basically I have to grab some data, compare it to other data, generate mathematical factors and then apply those factors and transform the data for the transformation to the web. Because my pal Richard Campbell is such a pain in the ass, I could not use a cursor. So basically I had to use some temp tables and local variables. I got something in the end that looks like this (after all the temp tables and such), the damn casting really stole about 15 minutes of my life that I can never get back:
Select @CBFactor = @CBTotal_Factor/@CBTotal_UnFactor
Select @HJFactor = @HotJobsTotal_Factor/@HotJobsTotal_UnFactor
--update MS13_detail
UPDATE RPT_RCMS13_Detail
SET RPT_RCMS13_Detail.CareerBuilder = [CareerBuilder]*@CBFactor,
RPT_RCMS13_Detail.HotJobs = [HotJobs]*@HJFactor
WHERE weekending_dt=@weekending_dt
--create MS14
Insert Into dbo.RPT_RCMS14_Detail
Select Weekending_ID, Weekending_DT, Location_ID, WebSubLocation_ID,Location_NM, WebSubLocation_NM, CAST(CAST(CareerBuilder AS real) / CAST(TotalAmt
AS real) AS decimal(6, 3)) * 100 as CareerBuilderPer,
CAST(CAST(HotJobs AS real) / CAST(TotalAmt AS real) AS decimal(6, 3)) * 100 AS HotJobsPer, CAST(CAST(Monster AS real) / CAST(TotalAmt AS real) AS decimal(6, 3)) * 100 AS MonsterPer, CAST(CAST(LocalNewsPaper1 AS real) / CAST(TotalAmt AS real) AS decimal(6, 3)) * 100 AS LocalNewsPaperPer1, LP1_Name, CAST(CAST(LocalNewsPaper2
AS real) / CAST(TotalAmt AS real) AS decimal(6, 3)) * 100 AS LocalNewsPaperPer2, LP2_Name
From dbo.RPT_RCMS13_Detail
Where weekending_dt=@weekending_dt
Ok, enough with the damn TSQL. TSQL is for babies. That was just to wake me up after my 8 mile run (yes 8 miles, 1.5 miles to meet Kathleen, 5 miles with her and 1.5 miles back home-how long until the Ironman?). Here was what grew some hair on my chest:
Jonathan Zuck drafted me to help ACT get their website online (like a friggin year ago). I could not say no since ACT has put me before Congress at least 4 or 5 times and introduced me to Heather Davisson, a DAR to my SAR as well as a fellow Scott and she likes to splurge and take me to lunch at Jean-Georges to the envy of all my friends (but I once had to take photos of Mike Piazzas butt for her).
Anyway, I did the site in C# and so far so good. We went live today. So I had to use a data repeater on this page on the left nav (well it is a user control so I can take advantage of fragmented caching since the data is loaded dynamically and the data is not that dynamic). But the problem is that the SQL returns repeating information for each row and we dont want it to repeat in the nav hierarchy. I was way too lazy to do some funky TSQL (I know for wimps), so I decided to take the C# approach on the server. I have to use a data repeater and hide the title for each repeating row. So I would have to programmatically make invisible some client side HTML code on the server. I had to play with the data repeater template and basically make the HTML <tr> element that I want to conditionally hide run on the server (runat=server) so I can manipulate it programmatically on the server ItemEvent. It is real easy once you figure it all out. You set the HTML table row <tr> up with a unique ID (trheader ) and a runat=server. Then on the ItemEvent handler (my method RepeaterSkip) I grab the current data row by intercepting the binding and then compare that to the module level static variable, if |