Category: Education

How to be a more marketable software developer

On Thursday I am presenting a quick talk at the Internet Professional Society of Alabama. This is part of an event called Idea Spark, where multiple individuals give five minute talks. I thought it’d be fun to steer away from the normal tech talks and talk about something near and dear to all of our hearts: money!

My talk will give a few quick points on some basic, inexpensive things you can do to make yourself more valuable, and thus command a larger salary in the marketplace. I can testify these things work, having done them myself. However it’s not with out a lot of sweat equity. You’ll need to invest a fair amount of time to achieve success, but everything worth doing is worth taking the time to do right.

Here’s the slide deck in PDF format: how-to-be-a-more-marketable-software-developer

I have to give thanks and much credit to Doug Turnure, a content architect for Microsoft. He first gave a very similar presentation some time back and was gracious enough to share the slides. I took them, did some rearranging, trimming, and additions to achieve this current version which is a blend of his thoughts and mine.

I hope you find the talk and the slides valuable as you give yourself the edge in this competitive marketplace.

Second Chances – The MSDN Developer Conference

If you are like me, you missed PDC this year, and are probably pretty bummed about it. Fortunately you do get second chances sometimes! Microsoft is hosting a series of developer conferences around the country called the MSDN Developer Conference. This is a one day event that highlights the best of the PDC presentations, put on by a mix of Microsoft employees and community leaders in the area where the conference is held. I’ll be attending the Atlanta event on December 16 2008, but there are events in Houston, Orlando, Chicago, and other areas beginning in December and running into February of next year. Be sure to check the site for more info.

There will be three tracks at the event, the new Azure Services Platform, Client and Presentation, and Tools Languages and Frameworks. There is a $99 attendance fee, but if you compare that to the cost of PDC that’s quite a bargain. There’s also going to be some cool swag, and attendance is limited so be sure to register today. 

PDC2008 – What’s in a name?

As many of you know, the Microsoft PDC (Public Deveopers Conference) 2008 took place last week. Lots of new announcements, and in a class move Microsoft has made all of the sessions available for download from their site.

However, navigating the site, as pretty as it is, and downloading all of the sessions can be a bit time consuming. One of my twitter friends, Luciano Guerche (@guercheLE ) has posted a series of blog posts for each day with quick hyperlinks to everything for faster download. He’s even done a post on how to bulk download using Firefox and DownThemAll.

PDC 2008 – Day 1 (46 matching sessions)

PDC 2008 – Day 2 (50 matching sessions)

PDC 2008 – Day 3 (60 matching sessions)

PDC 2008 – Day 4 (49 matching sessions)

How to download PDC Sessions using DownThemAll! Firefox addon

While this makes it much easer to download, my one complaint, regardless of where you download from, is knowing what you have. Microsoft simply named each file for it’s session number, leaving you with files such as PC47.wmv or BB08.wmv. Come on folks, what’s the point of having long file names if we’re not going to use them?

So I wrote a series of batch files that will rename each file, adding the name of the session after the session number. This will make it much easier to determine what you have when browsing with explorer or when watching on your Zune. Simply copy the text below into your favorite text editor and save them as one or more .bat files.

RenamePDC2008Day1.bat
rename TL02.wmv "TL02 Under the Hood- Advances in the .NET Type System.wmv"
rename TL47.wmv "TL47 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System- A Lap Around VSTS 2010.wmv"
rename BB08.wmv "BB08 Microsoft Dynamics CRM- The Appealing Business Application.wmv"
rename TL29.wmv "TL29 Live Labs Web Sandbox- Securing Mash-ups, Site Extensibility, and Gadgets.wmv"
rename BB53.wmv "BB53 SharePoint Online- Extending Your Service.wmv"
rename BB48.wmv "BB48 Microsoft Advertising Platform- A Lap Around.wmv"
rename BB11.wmv "BB11 Identity Roadmap for Software plus Services.wmv"
rename PC12.wmv "PC12 Deep Dive- The New Rendering Engine in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.wmv"
rename ES16.wmv "ES16 A Lap Around Windows Azure.wmv"
rename TL46.wmv "TL46 Microsoft Visual C Sharp IDE- Tips and Tricks.wmv"
rename BB58.wmv "BB58 Case Study- Bridging On-Premises with the Cloud.wmv"
rename ES30.wmv "ES30 Datacenters and Resilient Services.wmv"
rename PC47.wmv "PC47 Microsoft Expression Blend- Tips and Tricks.wmv"
rename BB56.wmv "BB56 Showcase- Industry Leaders Moving to the Cloud.wmv"
rename BB49.wmv "BB49 Microsoft Advertising Platform- A Day in the Life of a Click.wmv"
rename TL40.wmv "TL40 Dublin and .NET Services- Extending On-Premises Applications to the Cloud.wmv"
rename PC53.wmv "PC53 Building High Performance JScript Applications.wmv"
rename PC17.wmv "PC17 Developing for Microsoft Surface.wmv"
rename PC20.wmv "PC20 ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap.wmv"
rename BB42.wmv "BB42 Identity- Geneva Server and Framework Overview.wmv"
rename BB09.wmv "BB09 Microsoft Office Communications Server and Exchange- Platform Futures.wmv"
rename TL33.wmv "TL33 Managed Extensibility Framework- Overview.wmv"
rename TL19.wmv "TL19 Microsoft Visual Studio- Bringing out the Best in Multicore Systems.wmv"
rename TL30.wmv "TL30 Microsoft Sync Framework Advances.wmv"
rename TL16.wmv "TL16 The Future of C Sharp.wmv"
rename TL52.wmv "TL52 Team Foundation Server 2010- Cool New Features.wmv"
rename PC21.wmv "PC21 ASP.NET MVC- A New Framework for Building Web Applications.wmv"
rename PC27.wmv "PC27 Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and the Microsoft .NET Framework- Sharing Skills and Code.wmv"
rename PC59.wmv "PC59 Commerce Server Mojave- Overview.wmv"
rename TL25.wmv "TL25 Parallel Programming for Cplusplus Developers in the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio.wmv"
rename TL10.wmv "TL10 Deep Dive- Dynamic Languages in Microsoft .NET.wmv"
rename TL03.wmv "TL03 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System- Software Diagnostics and Quality for Services.wmv"
rename BB29.wmv "BB29 Identity- Connecting Active Directory to Microsoft Services.wmv"
rename BB01.wmv "BB01 A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform.wmv"
rename TL17.wmv "TL17 WF 4.0- A First Look.wmv"
rename TL48.wmv "TL48 Microsoft Visual Studio- Web Development Futures.wmv"
rename PC58.wmv "PC58 Framework Design Guidelines.wmv"
rename BB45.wmv "BB45 Office Communications Server 2007 R2- Enabling Unified Communications.wmv"
rename TL13.wmv "TL13 Microsoft Visual Cplusplus- 10 Is the New 6.wmv"
rename BB15.wmv "BB15 SQL Server- Database to Data Platform - Road from Server to Devices to the Cloud.wmv"
rename TL49.wmv "TL49 Microsoft .NET Framework- Overview and Applications for Babies.wmv"
rename TL45.wmv "TL45 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Database Edition- Overview.wmv"
rename TL09.wmv "TL09 Agile Development with Microsoft Visual Studio.wmv"
rename ES32.wmv "ES32 Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5.wmv"
rename TL44.wmv "TL44 IronRuby- The Right Language for the Right Job.wmv"
rename ES01.wmv "ES01 Developing and Deploying Your First Windows Azure Service.wmv"

 
RenamePDC2008Day2.bat
rename BB36.wmv "BB36 FAST- Building Search-Driven Portals with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight.wmv"
rename TL39.wmv "TL39 Coding4Fun- Windows Presentation Foundation Animation, YouTube, iTunes, Twitter, and Nintendo's Wiimote.wmv"
rename TL54.wmv "TL54 Natural Interop with Silverlight, Office, and Python in Microsoft Visual C Sharp and Microsoft Visual Basic.wmv"
rename BB57.wmv "BB57 Microsoft Dynamics AX- Building Business Process into Your Application.wmv"
rename ES29.wmv "ES29 Showcase- Windows Azure Enables - Nsoftware and Full Armor.wmv"
rename PC44.wmv "PC44 Windows 7- Programming Sync Providers That Work Great with Windows.wmv"
rename TL59.wmv "TL59 Visual Studio Debugger Tips and Tricks.wmv"
rename BB52.wmv "BB52 SQL Services- Tips and Tricks for High-Throughput Data-Driven Applications.wmv"
rename BB41.wmv "BB41 Live Services- What I Learned Building My First Mesh Application.wmv"
rename TL38.wmv "TL38 WCF- Zen of Performance and Scale.wmv"
rename PC24.wmv "PC24 Windows 7- Welcome to the Windows 7 Desktop.wmv"
rename TL07.wmv "TL07 Developing Applications Using Data Services.wmv"
rename BB04.wmv "BB04 Live Services- A Lap around the Live Framework and Mesh Services.wmv"
rename TL14.wmv "TL14 Project Velocity- A First Look.wmv"
rename BB16.wmv "BB16 SQL Server 2008- Beyond Relational.wmv"
rename ES13.wmv "ES13 How to Develop Supercomputer Applications.wmv"
rename TL55.wmv "TL55 The Concurrency and Coordination Runtime and Decentralized Software Services Toolkit.wmv"
rename PC52.wmv "PC52 Windows 7- Writing World-Ready Applications.wmv"
rename BB07.wmv "BB07 SQL Server 2008- Developing Large Scale Web Applications and Services.wmv"
rename PC51.wmv "PC51 Windows 7- Best Practices for Developing for Windows Standard User.wmv"
rename ES04.wmv "ES04 Windows Azure- Essential Cloud Storage Services.wmv"
rename BB26.wmv "BB26 SQL Server 2008- Business Intelligence and Data Visualization.wmv"
rename PC46.wmv "PC46 WPF Roadmap.wmv"
rename TL23.wmv "TL23 A Lap around Oslo.wmv"
rename TL27.wmv "TL27 Oslo- The Language.wmv"
rename PC11.wmv "PC11 Microsoft Silverlight Futures- Building Business Focused Applications.wmv"
rename TL56.wmv "TL56 Project Velocity- Under the Hood.wmv"
rename PC50.wmv "PC50 Windows 7- Using Instrumentation and Diagnostics to Develop High Quality Software.wmv"
rename PC33.wmv "PC33 Microsoft Visual Studio- Easing ASP.NET Web Deployment.wmv"
rename PC10.wmv "PC10 Microsoft Silverlight 2 for Mobile- Developing for Mobile Devices.wmv"
rename BB43.wmv "BB43 Identity- Geneva Deep Dive.wmv"
rename BB20.wmv "BB20 Live Services- Making your Application More Social.wmv"
rename BB23.wmv "BB23 A Lap around SQL Services.wmv"
rename PC23.wmv "PC23 Windows 7- Integrate with the Windows 7 Desktop.wmv"
rename BB02.wmv "BB02 Architecture of the .NET Services.wmv"
rename TL20.wmv "TL20 Entity Framework Futures.wmv"
rename PC06.wmv "PC06 Deep Dive- Building an Optimized, Graphics-Intensive Application in Microsoft Silverlight.wmv"
rename ES10.wmv "ES10 Developing Solutions for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Using WMI.wmv"
rename PC31.wmv "PC31 ASP.NET and JQuery.wmv"
rename BB22.wmv "BB22 Identity- Live Identity Services Drilldown.wmv"
rename TL12.wmv "TL12 Future Directions for Microsoft Visual Basic.wmv"
rename BB40.wmv "BB40 Sync Framework- Enterprise Data in the Cloud and on Devices.wmv"
rename PC04.wmv "PC04 Windows 7- Writing Your Application to Shine on Modern Graphics Hardware.wmv"
rename ES11.wmv "ES11 Developing Connected Home Applications and Services for Windows Home Server.wmv"
rename TL50.wmv "TL50 Research- BAM, AjaxScope, and Doloto.wmv"
rename BB05.wmv "BB05 Live Services- Building Applications with the Live Framework.wmv"
rename ES20.wmv "ES20 Developing Applications for More Than 64 Logical Processors in Windows Server 2008 R2.wmv"
rename PC16.wmv "PC16 Windows 7- Empower users to find, visualize and organize their data with Libraries and the Explorer.wmv"
rename ES02.wmv "ES02 Windows Azure- Architecting and Managing Cloud Services.wmv"

 
RenamePDC2008Day3.bat
rename TL06.wmv "TL06 WCF 4.0- Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0.wmv"
rename BB19.wmv "BB19 Live Services- Live Framework Programming Model Architecture and Insights.wmv"
rename TL57.wmv "TL57 Panel- The Future of Programming Languages.wmv"
rename BB38.wmv "BB38 .NET Services- Connectivity, Messaging, Events, and Discovery with the Service Bus.wmv"
rename ES14.wmv "ES14 IIS 7.0 and Beyond- The Microsoft Web Platform Roadmap.wmv"
rename BB14.wmv "BB14 SQL Services- Futures.wmv"
rename ES12.wmv "ES12 Exposing Connected Home Services to the Internet via Windows Home Server.wmv"
rename ES31.wmv "ES31 Showcase- How HP Built their Magcloud Service on Windows Azure.wmv"
rename TL58.wmv "TL58 Research- Concurrency Analysis Platform and Tools for Finding Concurrency Bugs.wmv"
rename PC27.wmv "PC27-R Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and the Microsoft .NET Framework- Sharing Skills and Code [REPEAT].wmv"
rename PC25.wmv "PC25 Windows 7- The Sensor and Location Platform- Building Context-Aware Applications.wmv"
rename TL26.wmv "TL26 Parallel Programming for Managed Developers with the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio.wmv"
rename TL42.wmv "TL42 Microsoft SQL Server 2008- Powering MSDN.wmv"
rename PC48.wmv "PC48 Research- Designing the World Wide Telescope.wmv"
rename PC35.wmv "PC35 Silverlight Controls Roadmap.wmv"
rename TL61.wmv "TL61 Panel- The Future of Unit Testing.wmv"
rename ES25.wmv "ES25 Showcase- Windows Azure Enables Live Meeting.wmv"
rename TL37.wmv "TL37 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System- Leveraging Virtualization to Improve Code Quality with Team Lab.wmv"
rename TL60.wmv "TL60 Improving Code Quality with Code Analysis.wmv"
rename TL43.wmv "TL43 Microsoft XNA Game Studio- An Overview.wmv"
rename TL46-R.wmv "TL46-R Microsoft Visual C Sharp IDE- Tips and Tricks [REPEAT].wmv"
rename BB37.wmv "BB37 SQL Server 2008- Developing Secure Applications.wmv"
rename BB59.wmv "BB59 Behind the Scenes- How We Built a Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Application.wmv"
rename PC22.wmv "PC22 Windows 7- Design Principles for Windows 7.wmv"
rename TL18.wmv "TL18 Oslo- Customizing and Extending the Visual Design Experience.wmv"
rename TL24.wmv "TL24 Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability.wmv"
rename ES07.wmv "ES07 Windows Azure- Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale.wmv"
rename ES22.wmv "ES22 Extending Terminal Services and Hyper-V VDI in Windows 7.wmv"
rename PC18.wmv "PC18 Windows 7- Introducing Direct2D and DirectWrite.wmv"
rename TL22.wmv "TL22 Concurrency Runtime Deep Dive- How to Harvest Multicore Computing Resources.wmv"
rename PC39.wmv "PC39 Inside the Olympics- An Architecture and Development Review.wmv"
rename BB51.wmv "BB51 Live Services- Programming Live Services Using Non-Microsoft Technologies.wmv"
rename PC03.wmv "PC03 Windows 7- Developing Multi-touch Applications.wmv"
rename BB25.wmv "BB25 SQL Server 2008- New and Future T-SQL Programmability.wmv"
rename BB39.wmv "BB39 .NET Services- Logging, Diagnosing, and Troubleshooting Applications Running Live in the Cloud.wmv"
rename TL28.wmv "TL28 Oslo- Repository and Models.wmv"
rename BB06.wmv "BB06 Live Services- Mesh Services Architecture and Concepts.wmv"
rename PC40.wmv "PC40 SQL Server Compact- Embedding in Desktop and Device Applications.wmv"
rename BB18.wmv "BB18 Dublin- Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server.wmv"
rename BB24.wmv "BB24 SQL Server 2008- Deep Dive into Spatial Data.wmv"
rename PC43.wmv "PC43 Deep Dive- What's New with user32 and comctl32 in Win32.wmv"
rename TL08.wmv "TL08 Offline-Enabled Data Services and Desktop Applications.wmv"
rename BB55.wmv "BB55 .NET Services- Access Control In Microsoft .NET Services.wmv"
rename ES23.wmv "ES23 Windows 7- Optimizing Applications for Remote File Services over the WAN.wmv"
rename PC30.wmv "PC30 ASP.NET Dynamic Data.wmv"
rename PC55.wmv "PC55 Oomph- A Microformat Toolkit.wmv"
rename TL16.wmv "TL16-R The Future of C Sharp [REPEAT].wmv"
rename ES06.wmv "ES06 Developing with Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET for Server Core.wmv"
rename ES03.wmv "ES03 Windows Azure- Cloud Service Development Best Practices.wmv"
rename PC14.wmv "PC14 Windows 7- New Shell User Experience APIs.wmv"
rename BB30.wmv "BB30 Live Services- Building Mesh-Enabled Web Applications Using the Live Framework.wmv"
rename TL15.wmv "TL15 Architecture without Big Design Up Front.wmv"
rename BB32.wmv "BB32 Microsoft Dynamics CRM- Building Line-of-Business Applications.wmv"
rename ES15.wmv "ES15 Web Application Packaging and Deployment.wmv"
rename TL21.wmv "TL21 WF 4.0- Extending with Custom Activities.wmv"
rename TL33.wmv "TL33-R Managed Extensibility Framework- Overview [REPEAT].wmv"
rename PC56.wmv "PC56 Windows Embedded Quebec- Developing for Devices.wmv"
rename TL23.wmv "TL23-R A Lap around Oslo [REPEAT].wmv"
rename BB28.wmv "BB28 .NET Services- Access Control Service Drilldown.wmv"
rename PC54.wmv "PC54 Mono and .NET.wmv"

RenamePDC2008Day4.bat

rename TL04.wmv "TL04 Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server- How We Use It at Microsoft.wmv"
rename BB31.wmv "BB31 Live Services- FeedSync and Mesh Synchronization Services.wmv"
rename BB09-R.wmv "BB09-R Microsoft Office Communications Server and Exchange- Platform Futures [REPEAT].wmv"
rename TL51.wmv "TL51 Research- Contract Checking and Automated Test Generation with Pex.wmv"
rename BB03.wmv "BB03 SQL Services - Under the Hood.wmv"
rename ES24.wmv "ES24 PowerShell- Creating Manageable Web Services.wmv"
rename PC02.wmv "PC02 Windows 7- Extending Battery Life with Energy Efficient Applications.wmv"
rename BB46.wmv "BB46 Exchange Web Services Managed API- Unified Communications Development for Exchange.wmv"
rename BB33.wmv "BB33 Dynamics Online- Building Business Applications with Commerce and Payment APIs.wmv"
rename BB13.wmv "BB13 SharePoint 2007- Creating SharePoint Applications with Visual Studio 2008.wmv"
rename PC01.wmv "PC01 Windows 7- Web Services in Native Code.wmv"
rename TL35.wmv "TL35 WCF- Developing RESTful Services.wmv"
rename SYMP01.wmv "SYMP01 Parallel Symposium- Addressing the Hard Problems with Concurrency.wmv"
rename SYMP04.wmv "SYMP04 Services Symposium- Expanding Applications to the Cloud.wmv"
rename TL36.wmv "TL36 Microsoft .NET Framework- Declarative Programming Using XAML.wmv"
rename ES19.wmv "ES19 Under the Hood- Inside the Windows Azure Hosting Environment.wmv"
rename PC49.wmv "PC49 Microsoft .NET Framework- CLR Futures.wmv"
rename PC34.wmv "PC34 Open XML Format SDK- Developing Open XML Solutions.wmv"
rename PC41.wmv "PC41 ASP.NET- Cache Extensibility.wmv"
rename TL32.wmv "TL32 Microsoft Visual Studio- Customizing and Extending the Development Environment.wmv"
rename PC42.wmv "PC42 Windows 7- Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce.wmv"
rename BB12.wmv "BB12 .NET Services- Messaging Services - Protocols, Protection, and How We Scale.wmv"
rename ES21.wmv "ES21 Windows 7 Presentation Virtualization- Graphics Remoting ( RDP) Today and Tomorrow.wmv"
rename BB35.wmv "BB35 Live Services- The Future of the Device Mesh.wmv"
rename PC26.wmv "PC26 Microsoft Visual Studio- Building Applications with MFC.wmv"
rename SYMP02.wmv "SYMP02 Parallel Symposium- Application Opportunities and Architectures.wmv"
rename SYMP05.wmv "SYMP05 Services Symposium- Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications.wmv"
rename PC29.wmv "PC29 Microsoft Silverlight 2- Control Model.wmv"
rename PC13.wmv "PC13 Windows 7- Building Great Audio Communications Applications.wmv"
rename BB34.wmv "BB34 Live Services- Notifications, Awareness, and Communications.wmv"
rename ES09.wmv "ES09 Enabling Test Automation Using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.wmv"
rename BB47.wmv "BB47 SharePoint 2007- Advanced Asynchronous Workflow Messaging.wmv"
rename TL34.wmv "TL34 Managed and Native Code Interoperability- Best Practices.wmv"
rename PC45.wmv "PC45 WPF- Data-centric Applications Using the DataGrid and Ribbon Controls.wmv"
rename PC05.wmv "PC05 Windows 7- Unlocking the GPU with Direct3D.wmv"
rename TL01.wmv "TL01 Office Business Applications- Enhanced Deployment.wmv"
rename BB54.wmv "BB54 Designing Your Application to Scale.wmv"
rename TL31.wmv "TL31 Oslo- Building Textual DSLs.wmv"
rename SYMP03.wmv "SYMP03 Parallel Symposium- Future of Parallel Computing.wmv"
rename SYMP06.wmv "SYMP06 Services Symposium- Cloud or No Cloud, the Laws of Physics Still Apply.wmv"
rename ES17.wmv "ES17 Windows Azure- Programming in the Cloud.wmv"
rename BB27.wmv "BB27 .NET Services- Orchestrating Services and Business Processes Using Cloud-Based Workflow.wmv"
rename PC07.wmv "PC07 WPF- Extensible BitmapEffects, Pixel Shaders, and WPF Graphics Futures.wmv"
rename BB10.wmv "BB10 Live Services- Deep Dive on Microsoft Virtual Earth.wmv"
rename PC19.wmv "PC19 Windows 7- Designing Efficient Background Processes.wmv"
rename BB44.wmv "BB44 Identity- Windows CardSpace Geneva Under the Hood.wmv"
rename PC15.wmv "PC15 Windows 7- Benefiting from Documents and Printing Convergence.wmv"
rename TL11.wmv "TL11 An Introduction to Microsoft F Sharp.wmv"
rename PC32.wmv "PC32 ASP.NET AJAX Futures.wmv"

Update – After I wrote this, I found @Jorriss (another twitter friend) post which essentially does the same thing as what I do above, only he uses some cool C# and reading the sessions names from the web, rather than the simple batch file approach I took above. Read his post then choose which solution best fits your needs.

SQL Saturday Orlando Full Text Searching Session

On October 25th, 2008 I presented “Getting Started with SQL Server 2008 Full Text Searching” at SQL Saturday in Orlando. First off, I want to apologize to the attendees for taking so long to get this material posted. But I can finally reveal what has been sucking up my spare time lately!

I, along with other MVP’s have been working on something called the SQL Server 2008 MVP book project. Many SQL MVP’s, myself included, volunteered to write one or more chapters for the book. Once published, all proceeds will go to charity. I’m very excited at the opportunity to contribute the chapter on Full Text Searching, which I submitted today. I’ll keep you posted as things progress.

We’re not the first ones to go down this road, Sara Ford is donating the proceeds from her Visual Studio Tips book to supply scholarships for the young folks in the hurricane ravaged town of Waveland MS. I hope you’ll support her efforts as well.

Meanwhile, what you really came for was the links relevant to my talk.

Detailed descriptive material can be found on my blog, ArcaneCode.com, with links to specific posts below.

First off, the slides and sample code can be located at the Code Gallery site I setup specifically for Full Text Searching with SQL Server:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SqlServerFTS

Look on the downloads page to see various projects around SQL Server Full Text Searching. I’ve created one “release” for each of the projects around FTS. Be sure to look on the right side at the various releases in order to see the various projects.

Next, you can get started with the basics by reading these entries on my blog:

Lesson 0 – Getting the Bits to do Full Text Searching in SQL Server 2005
Lesson 1 – The Catalog
Lesson 2 – The Indexes
Lesson 3 – Using SQL
Lesson 4 – Valid Data Types
Lesson 5 – Advanced Searching

After that you’ll be ready for some advanced topics.

Can you hear me now? Checking to see if FTS is installed.
Exploring SQL Servers FullTextCatalogProperty Function
Using the ObjectPropertyEx Function
Using FORMSOF in SQL Server Full Text Searching
Creating Custom Thesaurus Entries in SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Full Text Search
Creating and Customizing Noise Words in SQL Server 2005 Full Text Search
Creating and Customizing Noise Words / StopWords in SQL Server 2008 Full Text Search
Advanced Queries for Using SQL Server 2008 Full Text Search StopWords / StopLists

Blog Action Day – Fighting Poverty with Tech

Today is Blog Action Day, a day for bloggers to rally to a cause. This year the cause is poverty. I firmly believe one of the best ways to fight poverty is via education. Since what I know is development technology, I’d like to offer some suggestions and advice for someone aspiring to get into a career as a developer. Assuming someone has access to even a moderately low end computer, there are some great ways to educate yourself about development technologies at no cost, even ways to get development software at no charge that you can put to use to begin making money.

First are the express editions of Microsoft Visual Studio and SQL Server. You can find these at http://www.microsoft.com/Express/.

If you are still in school, Microsoft gives you access to more full featured versions of their development tools through their DreamSpark program. The site has complete instructions on getting your school added if it’s not already.

There are many ways to learn how to use these products. One of the main ways is through podcasts and video training. There are many I listen to, but the ones I’d suggest starting with are DNRTV, DotNetRocks, Channel 9 and Security Now. Other shows are linked to on my links page.

If you want something to help you manage and find other podcasts, consider the Zune software. Even if you can’t afford to purchase a Zune, you can download the Zune software for free and use it to manage and listen to your podcasts. You can go to the marketplace to find and subscribe, for free, to many podcasts. Once subscribed the software will download them automatically for you.

Finally, check out the free educational opportunities available to you at local user groups. Again on my links page you’ll find a list of groups local to my area. At these user groups, most of which are free, you can learn, and more importantly make contact with people in the tech industry. These contacts will be valuable to you as you seek to begin your career. They can tip you off to better paying jobs, prep you on how to look / talk, and more.

Of course, most of the links I’ve provided here revolve around Microsoft technologies. There are also other technologies available, surrounding languages such as Java, Perl, PHP, Ruby and more that are also free to the aspiring developer. Since they are a bit out of my areas of expertise I’d suggest searching the web for what interests you. If you are not sure, check the want ads (both newspaper and on-line) for the skill sets that are in demand in your area.

Using your time to advance your education can give you knowledge with makes your more valuable in the workplace, a proven path to escaping poverty.

October Open Spaces at BSDA

Come join us in October for a very special Birmingham Software Developers Association meeting. We will be having a Open Spaces session, to expose members and visitors to the concept. In Open Spaces, participants place topics for discussion on the board, then the group votes on the topics they’d like to discuss. A moderator moves the discussion along, and when the topic is worked out moves onto the next topic.

Some possible topics might include open source software, imperative versus declarative languages, and more. Any topic is open for debate and discussion, so please come prepared to discuss!

The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday October 9th at the New Horizons Training Center in Homewood, AL. Everyone is welcome.

SQL Saturday – Orlando – October 25th

Just a note for my friends in and near Orlando, I have agreed to come down and speak at the SQL Saturday event on October 25th. Just follow the link and pick SQL Saturday #8 for more details. My presentation will be on Full Text Searching. A big thanks to Andy Warren of End To End Training for inviting me and helping to make this possible.

WordCamp Birmingham – September 27 and 28

WordCamp is coming to town! September 27th and 28th, Saturday and Sunday. You may be aware, my own blog is hosted on WordPress. I like it’s simplicity, ease of use, and low cost. Plus I admit to a bit of nepitism, my brother in law is Dougal, who contributed to WordPress and will be one of the speakers at the upcoming event. Check out their website for all the details, look forward to seeing you there!

My Dev Kit

There’s a new meme of sorts on the web, folks talking about the tools they use to develop with. I first saw it on Shawn Wildermuth’s blog. Shawn’s a great guy, he co-wrote most of those .Net MCTS/MCPD study guides from MS Press, and does a lot of training on Silverlight. So I thought I would keep the meme alive and talk about my own tools.

Hardware

I do a lot on the road, so a laptop is essential. Mine’s getting up there in age, it’s an HP Pavillion dv8000. 2 gig ram, two internal 160 gig hard disks, 17 inch wide screen, single core 64 bit processor. It’s OK, but will hopefully get replaced next year with something with more cores and horsepower. I don’t care much for the keyboard, so I bought an external keyboard from Lenovo. It’s got a trackpoint so I don’t have to take my hands off the keyboard very often, and I use it with both my laptop and the Dell that work supplies me.

At home I use a larger wireless Microsoft mouse, on the road I use one of the smaller Microsoft travel mice. Also in my hardware list is an external Seagate 1TB drive. It hooks up via either firewire or USB, which is nice when my USB ports are all full.

Also in my list is my Zune. Yes my Zune. Cubical farms can get noisy at times, some good tunes on my Zune really help me to zone out and ignore my surroundings, focusing on my code. It’s also nice on my commute or daily walk, I listen to podcasts to keep up my technical knowledge. At night I hook it to my TV via my X-Box 360 to watch video podcasts, or sometimes I lay in bed before going to sleep and watch.

My final piece of hardware is my iPaq, it helps keep my appointments in line and my contacts, plus I have lots of e-books loaded on it for reading. I also used to use it for podcasts prior to getting my Zune.

Operating System and Dev Tools

My laptop currently runs 32 bit Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1. Since it maxes out at 2 gig, and some 64 bit drivers were not available when Vista first arrived, I saw no benefit to 64 bit and took the path of least resistance. I have quite a few virtual machines in a variety of OS (Server 2008, 2003, XP, Vista, and Ubuntu) for testing, development, and running Beta versions of programs. For a web browser, I bounce back and forth between FireFox and IE7. For a while I was using FF most of the time, but IE7 was a big improvement over 6, and I’m now using them about 50/50. I suspect when IE8 comes out I may be using it more, but will have to see.

Like Shawn I also use Outlook 2007 for my e-mail client. It’s so much easier to organize my mail in Outlook than the g-mail host. But I also use the other features, such as the calendar and task list to help manage my life. I also use the rest of the Office suite for my daily tasks.

I use SnagIt for grabbing still screen captures, awesome tool, and Camtasia for video screen captures. I’m working on several video tutorials now, which is fun but time consuming (which also explains while my blog posts have been off of late). I use Paint.Net for basic photo / image editing. For creating my blog posts, I write them originally in Word 2007, then use Windows Live Writer to post them to my blog.

For quick access to my daily programs, I use one of two things. I really like Bayden Systems SlickRun. I also create a shortcut menu using a technique I blogged about in February.

Developer Tools

As you might expect I use both SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio 2008 Team System for day to day development. My top add-ins are Red-Gates SQL Prompt bundle for SSMS and CodeRush for Visual Studio. For a text editor, I absolutely love UltraEdit. Since I have blogged a lot about my dev tools in the past, I will keep this section short.

The Cloud

I’m on a couple of social networking sites, in addition to this blog:

· Twitter

· Posterous

· LinkedIn

· MSDN Code Gallery – One site for SQL Server Full Text Searching and one for SQL Server Compact Edition.

Passing the Baton

OK, your turn, let’s see your blog with your tools!

TechMixer University Wrap-Up

I can’t believe it’s been a week already since TechMixer University! Wow what a great time. It was our first year, and the last unofficial total I heard was 426 attendees, plus probably another 75 or so in speakers, vendors, and event volunteers. If you attended, I would love to hear from you, especially about the selection of speakers and subjects since I served as chair of the education committee. Shoot me an e-mail at arcanecode at gmail.com. I’ll keep your feedback confidential, but that feedback (good, bad, or ugly) will help us with next years event.

After the event each volunteer was recognized and presented with nice award. I thought the coolest award tough came from my nine year old daughter Raven. She took one of the leftover flyers, cut it up and made her own newspaper article. Here it is for your enjoyment.

A Huge Success

Thanks again to everyone who participated, speakers, organizers, contributors and sponsors, and most of all the attendees.

Ted Neward goes well with cheesy stuffed burritos

I had quite the adventure last week getting to DevLink. Enroute Thursday night part of the electrical system in my old pickup decided to implode, leaving me stranded on the side of the interstate. I got it towed and had to wait for a friend to come get me (thanks Ben!). The closest place to wait was the Mexican Phone Company (aka Taco Bell). I claimed the booth with the wall outlet, setup my laptop, and settled in for 3 hours of waiting. Naturally there was no wi-fi to be found.

Always looking for opportunities to be productive, I worked on editing a Camtasia video I had recorded recently at a Bug.Net meeting. After a bit I decided to take a break and eat. While munching on a cheesy stuffed burrito I watched some videos I had downloaded from the InformIT site. In the first video Ted Neward talked about functional coding and touches on F#, in the second he dives deeper into F#. Once the videos and my cheesy stuffed burritos were done I returned to editing.

So the next day I got my wife’s van out of the shop (transmission had gone out leaving CodeStock – these conferences are getting expensive!) hopped in and took off once again for DevLink, this time making it just in time to see the last session of the day – none other than a presentation by Ted Neward and Amanda Laucher on F#. And I’ll be dog gone if Ted wasn’t wearing the exact same t-shirt he had one while filming the videos I’d watched. Made the experience that much more surreal. Either that or the cheesy stuffed burritos were haunting me, one of the two.

I did at least get one whole day in at DevLink, still well worth going to. And I’m not just saying that because I won a copy of Vista Ultimate and Master Chiefs decapitated head. Oh and if you are looking to learn a little more on F#, Ted’s got a great article in the Sept/Oct 2008 issue of Code Magazine called F# 101. Good reading.

All in all, despite the vehicular issues DevLink was still a good value and I plan to make it an annual trip.

CodeStock

I was at CodeStock in Knoxville over this previous weekend. Great conference. It was run very well, everything went quite smoothly. I attended some really great sessions, and got to meet a ton of great folks.

The twitter get together the night before at the hotel was awesome. It was sort of weird, a lot of the folks I have known on twitter for several months now, but this was the first time we got to meet face to face. As I told my wife, “I got to see a lot of old friends for the very first time and catch up on old times.” We got into some really interesting discussions on development topics, user group activities, and just had a lot of fun in general.

I attended a lot of good sessions during the day, but want to point out a few in particular. The first was put on by Amanda Launcher and Joe O’Brien. They talked about alternative languages such as Ruby and F#, and why learning them was important. They pointed out that alternative languages help you think about different approaches to problem solving. Gave us a lot to think about, and has me eager to dive into those F# books I bought.

The other  two sessions were on LINQ. Joe Kunk did a LINQ to SQL session. His stated goal was to give us enough info to return to the office and write our first LINQ app. This combined with Jim Wooley’s session on LINQ Migration Strategies did just that, I sat down Sunday and, I admit with the help of a few books, in a few hours had written my first LINQ code to talk to SQL Server Compact Edition.

I thought CodeStock was a great investment of my time, and am looking forward to returning next year.

SQL Heroes and Data Dudes

In case you are wondering where I’ve been lately, it’s been a combination of issues at work plus putting the final nails in the schedule for TechMixer University. It’s been a big team effort, and as chair of the education committee I’ve had some great help gathering speakers for the event. We just published the first round of speakers and tracks so be sure to go take a look. And if you haven’t signed up yet, you better hurry registration is rapidly filling up!

On the interesting SQL News front, thanks to Jason over at StatisticsIO I just found out about the SQL Heroes site.  They are having a contest for the best SQL Server 2008 community project submitted to CodePlex. Here’s a listing of the current SQL projects currently there. Looks like some useful utilities, and the contest still has a month left in it so plenty of time to assemble your own project and submit to the contest.

I recently began diving deeper into Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition (aka “Data Dude”) and wanted to learn more about it. Fellow SQL MVP Andy Leonard has come out with a new book, the first in a series on the subject. Volume 1, available from Solid Quality Mentors, takes you from the basics of creating your first database project, into versioning your database and scripts, right into building and deploying. There’s also some interesting and useful material in the appendixes, including installation of data dude and importing a database schema. I was also interested in getting a peak at his development environment. And at a mere 15 dollars I thought it was a bargain.

devLink Almost Sold Out

I mentioned a few weeks ago I was looking forward to attending devLink. If you haven’t heard of it, devLink is a conference being held in Murfreesboro TN, just south of Nashville. It started out small but has turned into a pretty big deal. I went last year, and will be returning again this year.

I just got an e-mail, the conference is almost sold out! Less than 30 spots remain. If you want your chance to see me live and in person (and who wouldn’t?) then rush now to their site and pick up your pass. At only 75 bucks it’s a bargain you can’t afford to pass up.