Microsoft DevDays 2009 is just around the corner and should prove to be quite exciting. In preparation for my talk entitled "Entity Framework: A scenic tour" I recently did a dry run at the monthly SA Developer.net meeting and got some great feedback from the community on how to improve the presentation for DevDays. Thanks to all that came to listen and support me.

The blurb for the presentation goes as follows: "Join us on an introductory tour of the ADO.Net entity framework, an advanced data access technology that bridges the gap between the database schema and objects in your application. We will explore the new mapping capabilities that allow one to map unwieldy database tables to neat objects that make use of object oriented principles such as inheritance. Queries will be demonstrated against this new Entity Model using both Entity SQL and Linq to Entities. We will end off the tour by briefly touching on some of the more advanced features of the framework."

At the end of the talk I promised to get the slides up along with a screencast and code. I apologise for the delay in doing this but hardware issues with my graphics card meant a full format and a bit of a delay in getting this up. But none the less you can now download these below.

Note: This is the demo prior to the community feedback and I will make some adjustments before the DevDays event to the presentation.

Thanks again to all those who came to listen!

Entity Framework - A scenic tour – ScreenCast
Entity Framework - A scenic tour – Slides
Entity Framework - A scenic tour – Demo

This morning I gave a presentation for the Microsoft Devs4Devs event entitled “The Buzzword Puzzle: Web technology integration” where I demonstrated the integration of various technologies including the following:

• SQL 2008
• LINQ
• WCF
• AJAX
• jQuery
• Silverlight 2
• WPF

If you are interested in some more detail here are the slides and project files:
Sildes.zip (327.72 kb)
Project.zip (61.35 kb)

Some useful links include:
MS SQL: http://www.microsoft.com/SQL
jQuery: http://jquery.com/
AJAX: http://ajax.asp.net/
WCF vs ASMX: http://fuchangmiao.blogspot.com/2008/09/wcf-vs-asmx.html

If you were present for the talk I hope that you found it interesting. Send me a mail (via contact link) if you have any questions or comment.

Note:
To open this demo you will require the Silverlight 2 SDK and a copy of the Northwind Database.

Silverlight 2 RC0 has just been released with some new features including:

• New Controls (Password Box, Progress Bar, Combo Box)
• New Control Skins
• New Graphics Rendering methods for crisper lines and fewer artefacts
• Various API updates

Read more about this release at: ScottGu's Blog
Download the new release here

I have just gotten back from doing a presentation for SA Developer entitled “Silverlight 2: A developer's perspective” and thought to post the demo project and slides for all those interested. So here they are:

Sildes (540.60 kb)
Project Files (171.14 kb)

To be able to run these you will need to install the Silverlight SDK which you can get hold of here.

Life is quite busy at the moment so I hope to post a proper blog entry with the details of this talk early October but if I forget please bug me about it.

Some links that may help you get going with Silverlight 2 are:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/22/first-look-at-silverlight-2.aspx
http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2008/03/27/10290.aspx
http://www.silverlight.net

Hope you find this useful. Drop me a line with any questions you may have.

Today Visual Studio 2008 SP1 was released adding some really great enhancements to the development experience. Some of the enhancements include (taken from msdn):

• Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements
• SQL Server 2008 support
• ADO.NET Entity Designer
• Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008.
• Improved WPF designers
• Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’)

The .Net framework also has an SP1 which includes the following enhancements:

• Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code
• WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services
• Streamlined installation experience for client applications
• Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features

You can get more details and download the whole pack at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

Note: This is quite a large download at 831.3 MB