Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks @ PDC

I'm hosting a birds of a feather Sunday night from 8-9pm at the Microsoft PDC. The topic is Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks. Hope to see you there - and grab a beer or three afterwards.

Code:
BoF29
Room: Room 402AB

MS Professional Developers Conference...

...here we come.

Myself and fellow ObjectSharpies DennisLee and DaveLloyd are heading out Saturday morning for the PDC in L.A. Stay tuned for our perspectives on Whidbey (essentially .NET 2.0), Yukon (SQL Server 2004?), and Longhorn (Windows 2005?). Key pieces of technology I'll be researching are Indigo (new web services framework) and Avalon (new windows forms framework).

I'm also looking forward to seeing MSBuild and trying to understand how it will compare, compete or compliment NAnt. I still don't see anything about the next version of Visual Source Safe - what's up with that?

If you are in town, look me up and I'll buy you a beer.

.NET Power Session: Debugging and Tracing .NET Applications - Oct 16, 2003 - Toronto - -9

Please click the link on the right to view the presentation.

New to object orientation? Need a review? Want to see how OO is implemented by the Common Type System? Get all the answers in this session. .Net and all of it's languages take full advantage of the OO paradigm. This session introduces the CTS and shows how it supports OO within your applications.

Topics:

  • Intro to the CTS
    • value types vs. reference types
  • Object Orientation in C# and VB.Net
    • inheritance
    • encapsulation
    • polymorphism
  • Hiding
  • Overloading
  • Modifiers
    • abstract
    • new
    • virtual
    • override
  • Interfaces

Troubleshooting today's complex applications can quickly consume a project's budget. Visual Studio.NET contains powerful tools to make developers more productive when debugging and tracing applications and components. This intensive half day seminar at ObjectSharp allowed the capacity crowd an opportunity to hear about the exciting debugging and tracing capabilities of Visual Studio.NET 2003.

Dennis Lee and Jay Sreedharan of ObjectSharp demonstrated their favourite debugging techniques to conquer the most persistent bugs. Topics covered:

  • Debugging a stored procedure
  • Performing conditional debugging
  • Remotely debugging a web application from a client machine
  • Stepping through a windows service and a serviced component
  • Debugging a web application at dev time or tracing through it after deployment
  • Setting break points and stepping through a windows application

CTT .Net User's Group: Take Advantage of Custom Attributes - Sep 24, 2003 - Toronto - -8

Although it might seem that everything that a developer could want to do can be accomplished within the bounds of a class hierarchy, the reality is (of course) something different. There are instances where the functionality that needs to be applied to a group of classes actually cuts across the hierarchy. One of the more common instances of this need is the ability for an object to be serialized into a stream of characters. It would be nice to be able to implement serialization once and be able to apply it to all classes without needed to embed it in every base class.

In the .NET world, this functionality is accomplished through the use of attributes. In this presentation, we looked not only at the mechanics behind defining your own set of attributes, but also at the impact that they can have on the design of the class hierarchy and some of the uses to which they can be put.

This presentation included:

  1. Introduction to Attributes
    • Why are they useful
    • Aspect-Oriented Programming
    • How Attributes Impact Your Class Design

  2. Creating a Custom Attribute
    • Building a Custom Attribute
    • Using a Custom Attribute

  3. Putting Attributes to Use
    • Logging method calls
    • How NUnit uses attributes to implement its functionality


Download the slides and demos using the icons on the right.

MSDN:Microsoft .NET™ Architecture Forum Series - Jun 3, 2003 - Toronto - -6

In the June session, Barry Gervin discussed the deployment of an architectural vision through the use of Enterprise Templates in Visual Studio .NET. The prescriptive guidance you provide your developers through an Enterprise Template not only increases the chances of them implementing your vision accurately but also improves their productivity. The second presentation covers issues and strategies for migration of a classic ASP/COM application to ASP.NET. The final presentation covered techniques for migrating PowerBuilder Applications to .NET.

Slides and sample code are now available. Please click the links on the right to view the presentation, whitepaper and download the sample code.

Canadian Technology Triangle .Net User's Group: Intro to BizTalk Server - Mar 26, 2003 - Toronto - -5

Today’s business world introduces many challenges for IT departments as they are given the complicated task of integrating many applications that were either purchased from a vendor, built in house or inherited from a company merger. These applications almost invariably run on different platforms and were built with different tool sets. BizTalk Server's main purpose is to integrate these applications (in house or remote). B2B communications can also be achieved with BizTalk Server.

This presentation includes:

  • A discussion of when to use BizTalk Server and when not to use it
  • How BizTalk Server works internally
  • An overview of the graphical tools that BizTalk Server provides.
  • How to submit documents to BizTalk Server
  • Simple examples of documents flowing through BizTalk Server
  • Dehydration and rehydration of schedules in BizTalk Server
  • Com component, .NET Assembly and scripting component usage in BizTalk Server
  • Application integration components
  • Debugging tools in BizTalk Server

Download the slides and demos using the icons on the right.

You may also be interested in our 4 day Classroom BizTalk 2002 Training.

Toronto Visual Basic Users Group (TVBUG): ADO.NET - Nov 12, 2002 - Toronto - -4

The ADO.NET class libraries provide managed data access to relational databases within .NET.

Barry gave an in depth presentation on ADO.NET covering topics such as:

  • Working with related master/detail tables
  • Connection Pools
  • Transaction handling
  • Multi-User Concurrency
  • Error handling

Please click the links on the right to view the presentation and download the sample code.

Please also see the notes inside the PPT Slide deck for further details, and references to the sample code.

Canadian Technology Triangle .NET User Group: Visual Studio.NET - Nov 8, 2002 - Toronto - -3

Dave Lloyd provided an in depth tour of the Visual Studio .NET IDE at the Canadian Technology Triangle User group on October 30th. Dave divided up the IDE into its components and discussed each one in a demo format.

The slides & demo code are now available by clicking on the links to the right.

DataSet Debugger 1.0 now available - Oct 29, 2002 - Toronto - -2

The DataSet Debugger will let you easily peer into a dataset viewing (and even editing) the schema and data of each DataTable within. The Debugger breaks out the modifications to data, showing the changed, inserted, and deleted rows. When looking at the changed rows, modified values are highlighted and you can view the original and proposed values. Finally, you can quickly see the data in XML format as well as the schema in XSD format. C# source code is included.

Download from GotDotNet.com

The Common Type System (CTS): Applying OO Techniques in .Net - Jun 20, 2002 - Vancouver - -1

Please click the link on the right to view the presentation.

New to object orientation? Need a review? Want to see how OO is implemented by the Common Type System? Get all the answers in this session. .Net and all of it's languages take full advantage of the OO paradigm. This session introduces the CTS and shows how it supports OO within your applications.

Topics:

  • Intro to the CTS
    • value types vs. reference types
  • Object Orientation in C# and VB.Net
    • inheritance
    • encapsulation
    • polymorphism
  • Hiding
  • Overloading
  • Modifiers
    • abstract
    • new
    • virtual
    • override
  • Interfaces

Dennis Lee is a consultant and instructor with ObjectSharp Consulting. He has worked extensively as a trainer and developer in a variety of technologies including PowerBuilder, Java and now .Net. Dennis has tried to ignore Microsoft development technologies for most of his career but could not resist the temptation of .Net.