FREE Pass Sessions
25 & 26 May, 2005
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For the love of Microsoft .NET technologies, we are giving away 16 exciting sessions, spread across 8 parallel tracks, covering a spectrum of associated .NET technologies, presented by industry stalwarts like Wei-Meng Lee, Malcolm Groves, Matthew Hardman, Terry Dietzler, Sanjeev Sharma, Hadi Hariri, Michael Li, Sebastian Weber and Rashish Pandey. All this, on the house, with no hidden costs, replete with lunch and refreshments. You don't want to miss this!
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Free Passes on Wait-List Mode!
We are overwhelmed by the response received from system architects, project leaders, programmers, VB, C/C++, Delphi and even Java developers. While we would love to open the floodgates to as many .NET enthusiasts as possible, we have had to take a step back, heave a sigh, and say to ourselves that any more passes in the FREE category, and we would be in the midst of a logistical and administrative nightmare. Therefore, while we still urge you to register for a FREE pass, we cannot guarantee you a seat to the FREE pass sessions. However, we will be happy to place you on the wait-list for this event. If a registered attendee is unable to attend and additional space at the event becomes available, we will notify you with a confirmation e-mail.
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The Road to Avalon: Building Next Generation GUI Applications
Matthew Hardman
This session contains an overview of Avalon, the next generation graphics presentation subsystem. It consists of a display engine and managed-code framework. Building UI, graphics, documents and media into a single environment; providing a richer experience by unifying these together, allowing them to be integrated in a far deeper way than before; and reducing the number of APIs developers have to track by putting things into a single managed object-orientated interface. Avalon takes advantage of the DirectX-based model using a Vector- rather than bitmap-based, supports high-dpi, and double buffering. Also discussed is declarative and procedural programming support for designers and developers to do what they want.
Unit Testing with NUnit
Terry Dietzler
This session demonstrates how to create applications more efficiently and with fewer defects. The methodology is known as test-driven development and it all begins with testing. Creating tests for individual units of code rather than traditional end-of-project testing greatly reduces your defect rate and thereby shortens your time-to-market. Accelerate your development by working smarter, not harder.
Together for Visual Studio.NET
Malcolm Groves
Successfully building .NET applications requires an integrated approach that covers the entire software lifecycle. This lifecycle involves a spectrum of activities from requirements, design, implementation, deployment, and application management. Together for Visual Studio .NET is a vital part of any Visual Basic .NET or C# project.
In this session, we show how Together can be used to build the right architecture, enable greater team productivity, and reduce the learning curve, including: using UML to model your system, LiveSource, code audits, design patterns, and documentation generation.
What is New in Visual Basic 2005
Wei-Meng Lee
A veritable workhorse of a programming language, Visual Basic's functionality continues to evolve and the scope of its applicability is expanding. Microsoft's scheduled release of Visual Basic 2005 will have many new features and revisions over its previous release of this language. In this session, we explore the latest features in Microsoft's upcoming release of Visual Basic 2005 and their implications for developers.
Wei-Meng Lee takes you on a tour of the new My Namespace, the return of the Edit-and-Continue, Code Snippet, XML commenting, Generics, new keywords in VB.NET as well as many other new or revised capabilities. New capacities, functionalities and their application scope will be explained in detail. In addition, you will learn how developer's applications can be deployed and updated automatically using Visual Studio 2005's new ClickOnce feature.
SQL Server 2005: High Availability & Scalability
Sanjeev Sharma
The scalability of SQL Server 2005 includes various database engine enhancements via features like Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) memory on Windows Server 2003, and support for "hot-add" memory and dynamic CPU affinity. This session deals with online index operations, Database Mirroring and how they now allow concurrent modification of the underlying table or index (updates, inserts, deletes). This makes online index maintenance such as create, rebuild, drop, and reorganising (including BLOBS) much faster for 24x7 operations, where the maintenance windows may be small.
Using ADO.NET
Chad Z. Hower
ADO.NET is Microsoft's latest data access technology and an important part of .NET. ADO.NET may share part of its name with ADO but that is the only thing they have in common. Indeed, ADO.NET differs greatly from ADO, DAO, and ODBC. Developers moving from these technologies to ADO.NET must adapt and learn many new concepts.
Gone are record sets, snapshots, dynasets, and more. With ADO.NET, you cannot simply connect directly to data but instead must use a disconnected model or interact with SQL directly. This session provides an overview of ADO.NET and its new concepts.
ALM: Quest for the Perfect Requirements
Michael Li
If you are in the business of building applications, you will appreciate the importance of identifying the proper requirements before coding. The cost of not doing so can result in complete failure of the project. This session presents how Borland CaliberRM can help you manage requirements on an enterprise level, facilitate collaboration, conduct impact analysis before making any changes, and accommodate changing user requirements. ALM best practices will be demonstrated to show you how to gain control of your project. If you have ever suffered the pain of bad specification or lack of it, you do not want to miss this session. It will change the way you think about project management and application development!
Cool Features of ASP.NET 2.0
Wei-Meng Lee
ASP.NET 2.0's many new features can simplify the life of a web developer. In this session, Wei-Meng Lee demonstrates some less known but interesting features in ASP.NET 2.0.
New features of ASP.NET 2.0 surveyed at this session include, how to encrypt database connection strings in web.config and how to localise your web application to display in multiple languages. Moreover, numerous other additional features are demonstrated, including using the Client Callback Manager to perform real-time updating of web pages and how SQL Cache Dependency can enhance your overall application performance.
BIZTALK Server 2004
Sanjeev Sharma
This session reviews the details of web services support in BizTalk Server 2004. Specifically, we will cover the use cases and limitations. This session also reviews the new WSE adapter for BizTalk. The new WSE adapter will enable BizTalk customers to leverage their investment in advanced web service specifications (specifically WS-Security). If you are planning to use BizTalk to aggregate or interact with web services, do not miss this session.
Web Applications Using IntraWeb
Hadi Hariri
IntraWeb is a web application development environment available for Delphi, Kylix, Visual Studio .NET, as well as Java. This session introduces IntraWeb and explains how its framework functions. You will also learn how to develop robust and powerful web applications with it. Topics discussed at this session include: session management, database development, deploying ISAPI, DSO and standalone servers, implementing SSL with standalone servers, Javascript and client-side events, working with templates, aligns, anchors and other presentation aspects.
C# Architected RAD - The Power of Objects, the Speed of RAD
Malcolm Groves
In the past, developers had to choose between the speed of developing Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools, and the maintainability offered by Object Oriented Design. Borland's Enterprise Core Objects (ECO) technology brings those two worlds together, combining extremely rapid, model-based development with the power of a model-aware, run-time framework.
This session serves as a very practical introduction to how C# developers can use ECO to build well-architected ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications quickly. We explore the core concepts of ECO before presenting many of the services the ECO framework provides, including Object Persistence, Object Versioning, Constraints, the UML design surface, and UI Mapping.
SQL Server Reporting Services 2000 - An Overview for Developers
Sebastian Weber
The Reporting Services are Microsoft's platform for developing, managing and deploying interactive reports. This session introduces the platform and demonstrates how reports are created in Visual Studio .NET and how they can be integrated in a custom Winform and web application. The session focuses on Reporting Services for SQL Server 2000 and provides a brief overview of the upcoming changes in SQL
Managing the Software Lifecycle with Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Rashish Pandey
In today's business climate, companies are under increased pressure to save resources by better managing how applications are designed, developed, tested, and deployed. In Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft and its partners will offer advanced application lifecycle management tools and processes that will assist organisations in delivering their solutions on time and under budget. This session will offer the first-ever glimpse of Microsoft's new enterprise tools and see how Visual Studio 2005 combines its historic leadership in developer productivity with a focus on tight integration, to deliver new products that will forever change the way you write software. The session will cover all the four role-based products which are part of Visual Studio Team System.
Automate the Build Process with NAnt
Terry Dietzler
While NAnt allows you to automate complex build processes, it also enables many other tasks in addition to the basic build process built into Visual Studio. Learn how NAnt manages dependencies, version control, automates the execution of unit tests, and calls external processes such as email or FTP. With NAnt, you can also gain complete control over your build process, for multiple versions, machine independence, and more.
Native .NET to J2EE Integration
Malcolm Groves
J2EE has established itself as one of the major platforms for corporate development. The reality is that even for .NET shops, there is often the requirement to work with existing J2EE applications. Yes, you can use web services, but what if you need to work with J2EE security or J2EE transactions? Or, what if your performance requirements mean that wrapping in web services or another bridging solution is not sufficient?
This session provides an in-depth explanation and demonstration of Borland Janeva, a technology integrated into Visual Studio .NET. The middleware allows .NET developers full, native access to existing applications running on BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere, Oracle Application Server and other J2EE application servers, without requiring any changes on the backend server.
Introduction to Compact & Mobile Framework
Michael Li
.NET Framework v1.1, ASP.NET Mobile Controls natively support over 200 devices ranging from cell phones and PDAs to 2-way pagers, all from a single mobile web form. This session provides an overview on the similarities and differences between ASP.NET Compact Framework, Mobile Framework and the magic behind adaptive rendering. The presentation evolves an application by employing a cross section of the mobile controls in order to demonstrate the rich component set that comes with the Framework. You will also learn the best practices on how to develop applications for multiple devices such as tabletPCs, PocketPCs, and mobile phones. Each device brings on a separate set of challenges including form factors, computing power, memory constraints, security and more. Code examples for this talk will be provided in C#.
Register for the FREE Pass
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VIP Sessions
25 & 26 May, 2005
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So you want to reach out to more than just the free tracks. You want to let your quest for .NET knowledge float around unhindered at the conference. You want to network with a mix of experts, users and industry leaders with unique .NET insights. You want to mingle with the who's who in the .NET world. You want to talk with developers who have created bleeding-edge infrastructure with .NET technologies. You want to meet industry luminaries. All you need is a VIP pass, at a throw away price as low as S$200 (See pricing details). Armed with a VIP pass, you have access to 32 sessions (14 exclusive), spread across 8 parallel tracks, delivered by the likes of Ingo Rammer, Clemens Vasters, Neal Ford, William Tay, Chad Z. Hower, Sebastian Weber, Wei-Meng Lee, Malcolm Groves, Matthew Hardman, Terry Dietzler, Sanjeev Sharma, Hadi Hariri, Michael Li, Sebastian Weber and Rashish Pandey. You don't want to miss this king-size treat!
Indigo - Building Services with the Community Technology Preview
Ingo Rammer
In March 2005, Microsoft released the first community technology preview of Indigo. It unifies the programming models of ASP.NET Web Services, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services and - partially - even MSMQ. In this session, Ingo Rammer presents a first look at Indigo and how you can create your first service-based applications using the community technology preview.
ASP.NET Caching and Performance Tuning
Michael Li
Performance is crucial to all software applications. Users become impatient when forced to wait while an application processes their requests. For web developers, they must pay special attention to performance as they can also be contending with limited bandwidth and traffic load. This session showcases built-in performance optimisation mechanisms. Learn how declarative and programmatic caching enhances performance. We also discuss how Application Center and other tools monitor and measure performance, the features of caching and user controls, improving data access, and other optimisation best practices.
Visual Studio Team System and MSF v4
Clemens Vasters
With the new integrated Visual Studio Team System Suite, Microsoft takes its developer tools to a whole new level. Team System features project management integration, requirements capture, task management, bug tracking, source code control, integrated design-tools, and a centralized build system that allows customisation of these features to software processes. Team System comes ready with process guidance for the Microsoft Solutions Framework v4.0 Agile process, which will be the guiding beacon for the walk through Visual Studio Team System's new features presented in this session - along with tips on how to make the most out of the process and tools.
SQL Server 2005 .NET Development
Sebastian Weber
The upcoming SQL Server 2005 enables developers to write stored procedures, functions and triggers in a managed .NET language like C# or VB.NET. Moreover, custom data types can be created and used like built-in ones. This session provides an overview through these topics and demonstrates the trade-offs developers will be confronted with.
Interop & Integration: Best Practices for SOA with Today's Technologies
Clemens Vasters
Most applications are way too big and built as isolated "silos". They own their data, do not provide programmatic access to their data and cannot deal with foreign data. This means that they can neither be integrated well with other applications nor do they easily allow extensibility beyond a previously considered scope.
Services and service-oriented architectures (SOA) are about breaking the silos. Services is about making software more friendly to change and easier to integrate. Services acknowledge that there will always be new requirements, ideas or technologies down the road and that we are seemingly unable to commit to technology strategies that last for over three years.
The Proseware Services Demo, which illustrates these concepts, consists of eight autonomous, collaborating services, designed with best-practice architecture principles and implemented on Windows Server 2003. Proseware leverages the power of technologies such as Enterprise Services, ASP.NET Web Services, the Microsoft Message Queue and Microsoft Web Services Enhancements 2.0 to implement a robust, secure and scalable service-oriented system. This session demonstrates how all these technologies can be put to work effectively and reflects the complexity of real-life enterprise applications.
Clean Up Your .NET Code
Neal Ford
Even the best programmers fall into habits and coding ruts. This session delivers 10 techniques for improving code. It attacks weak structure, poor readability, and inflexible design. This material is derived from years of teaching developers and noticing those techniques and idioms that make code difficult to read or maintain. The session also shows how to resolve those problems. While these tricks and techniques were developed for internal use in our office, we realised that many developers could benefit from them. This session encourages you to re-think the assumptions you had about coding since college and shows you a better way to create the most important artifact of any development project - the code.
Transactions in .NET 2.0
Ingo Rammer
Version 2.0 of .NET Framework (formerly code-named "Whidbey") and its system. Transactions namespace give you completely new possibilities for creating transactional applications. You will learn how this kind of transactional management can simplify your applications. This session also shows you how to create your own transactional resources. Just imagine: Your own objects can now actively participate in distributed transactions and become equal peers to SQL Server or MSMQ. In addition, you will see how this technology allows you to take transactional applications to a different level.
Implementing a Risk-based Test Approach to Ensure Application Quality
Katherin Wu
It is unrealistic to assume you can test an entire application and eliminate every element of risk. Time demands and budget constraints make it impractical, if not impossible. With a risk-based test approach, testing activities are aligned with business requirements and prioritized so the most business-critical parts of an application are tested. This unique testing approach complements existing tools and processes, helping you understand what to test, how much to test, and how to communicate quality metrics in a manner that business managers can easily follow through. In this session, get up close and personal with the benefits of a risk-based testing approach and what testing solution is designed to automate and facilitate risk-based testing and provide a repeatable framework for IT organizations to do better with less.
Indigo - The Next Generation of Web Services
Clemens Vasters
In this session, we will discuss about "Indigo", the codename for a set of .NET technologies based on the web services architecture. This technology allows applications to communicate with each other using secure, reliable, and transacted messaging.
Updated Design Patterns for .NET
Neal Ford
By now, everyone has heard of the GoF book and its patterns, which have existed since 1994. That is the problem addressed in this session. The code samples in GoF are in C++ and Smalltalk, of which neither is the mainstream of today's new development. The ideas remain sound, but the implementations are outdated. This session updates the GoF patterns, taking advantage of the language features in C# and .NET. For example, the factory design pattern takes on a brand new light when combined with delegates and native properties. We also examine many design patterns and their optimal implementation in C#.
Demystifying WSDL
William Tay
While developers rely on the many powerful features of today's IDEs, inner technical plumbings are often ignored and worst yet - misrepresented and misunderstood. This ignorance of inner workings can lead developers to choose the wrong technologies and solutions for solving specific problems. Nevertheless, when it comes to troubleshooting the nooks, crannies and crevices at crunch time with no extra help, nothing beats a dirty pair of hands, a hammer and screwdriver. William Tay attempts to get everyone's hands dirty with a detailed look at WSDL, one of the most core and mature XML service technologies of today.
Topics to be covered include: what is WSDL, WSDL's critical role in service-orientated architecture (SOA), and WSDL's core elements and definitions. He will also survey WSDL best practices (eg. interoperability, extensibility, versioning, etc.) and the application of WSDL concepts in Indigo. The new features and enhanced functionality incorporated into the upcoming release of WSDL 2.0 are explained and compared with the current WSDL version.
Tuning, Profiling and Troubleshooting Distributed Applications
Ingo Rammer
It is too slow! Ever heard this sentence? Today's applications are getting increasingly distributed and performance bottlenecks are harder to spot. This session shows you how you can use a number of easily available tools and techniques to find (and fix) your application's performance problems on the edge of the network. The next time a user of yours calls up, you will know how to start looking for the problem to quickly identify the root cause and find a solution!
Application Setting the .NET way INI, Registry or XML
Chad Z. Hower
INI files and the registry are generally things of the past for .NET applications. But, what to use? XML seems appropriate, but one look at System.XML is enough to intimidate most developers, especially just to store a few fields. Fortunately, there is a very easy way in .NET to solve this, but one that is usually not seen by developers. This session explains how you can easily store and retrieve your application settings with simply a few lines of code, and using only built-in FCL classes.
SOAP Message-based Security: Today and Tomorrow
William Tay
One of the three key pillars of critical importance in the adoption of SOAP messaging-based services in an enterprise is security. In fact, the security aspect of standards-based messaging system has been singled out by worldwide CXOs as the most inhibiting factor in the mainstream-wide adoption within an enterprise. The ratification of WS-Security 1.0 by OASIS on 6 April 2004 has gone into great lengths to change that perception. William will show how and what you can do to secure your SOAP messaging-based services today. You will also learn how the same standards-based WS-Security Specifications can be used to secure the next generation of distributed web services with Indigo.
Advanced Updating Scenarios for ADO.NET
Neal Ford
ADO.NET offers powerful abstractions for building database applications. Along with this power comes remarkable flexibility. This session shows that flexibility for performing updates using ADO.NET. Other discussion topics include advanced capabilities of datasets, graceful update resolution conflicts, building briefcase applications, and constructing distributed client/server applications using XML and web services. Updating in the ASP.NET world will also be examined in greater detail. Aiming to bring ADO.NET to the next level, the entire session is about updating using ADO.NET and includes numerous examples.
The "Last Mile" Problem: How to Raise Events and Send Notifications to Users behind Firewalls
Clemens Vasters
One of the largest stumbling blocks in the writing of (web) service-based systems is events and notifications that are sent to the client. Assuming the client sits behind a firewall or a network address translation (NAT) gateway, just how can we get information out to the client, which she/he does not immediately request? Worse yet, what can be done if both communication endpoints live behind opposite firewalls or NAT? In this session, you see and will learn about some strategies for bridging this "last mile" between the corporate (or home!) firewall and the ultimate receiver in your programs. We will investigate how popular "file-sharing software", voice communication and instant messaging programs go about dealing with this issue. We will also look at whether applications can hitch a ride on any of the underlying protocols, and explain the role of WS-Addressing, WS-Eventing and "Message Multiplexing".
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