Category: Microsoft

I went to the Inbetween TechEd Conference and All I Got Was This Lousy XBox 360 Elite!

As you know from my previous entries, I am in Orlando attending TechEd, at the IT Pro week. In the weekend between the Dev and Pro conferences Microsoft turned over the Orange County Convention Center to the Florida User Groups. Spearheaded by the ONETUG group, this event was made possible through the cooperation of many user groups. I attended the SQL Saturday sessions that were held on both Saturday and Sunday, and they even let me hog the stage for an hour on Saturday and give my presentation on Full Text Searching in SQL Server 2005 and 2008.

I had a blast, and met a lot of great people. I have to admit I was surprised at how many folks were there just for the Inbetween conference and not TechEd. Out of the 45 folks who were in my session, all but 2 said they were local folks there for just the Inbetween conference.

As you can tell from the title of this post, I did indeed win something. Bear with me, as it’s a great story. At the Saturday night party they were giving away 3 XBoxes, two of which were randomly drawn for. Well the young lady who won one of them did not wish to keep it for whatever reason, and asked if she could draw another name, which she did.

Well the guy who won that night had his name drawn during Sunday’s giveaway of 7 XBoxes. He came up and told the story, and said he wanted to do the same thing, even though no one would have said a word had he decided to keep it. Well he drew and it was my name he pulled out of the box! I wish I could remember his name so I could say thanks again.

I’ve always wanted an XBox, but could never quite justify the expenditure. Now I have a new toy, and my kids are very excited over the prospect of playing some games with daddy. I think this will be a great gizmo for some daddy/kids together time.

Let me get serious for one moment, and give a big thanks to all the groups who came together at the last minute, and to Joe Healy, Florida Developer Evangelist, for giving the user groups the chance to show what they can do. It seems almost fashionable to bash Microsoft these days, but how many other companies would bear the expense of something as costly as the convention center and give it away to the user community?

Thanks to all for a great time, I hope the Inbetween conference becomes a regular feature at all future TechEd.

I’m Speaking At the TechEd ]InBetwen[ SQL Saturday Conference

TechEd is Microsoft’s annual developer conference, the really big one. This year it returns to the Orlando Convention Center, only this year they have decided to split it into two weeks. The first week is for developers, the second week is for the IT Professionals. My manager is generously sending two of us this year, my co-worker will be there the first week, I’ll be attending the second week to focus on the SQL Server information.

The two week split left Microsoft in an odd position, what to do with the convention center over the weekend? In their long standing tradition of working closely with the developer community, Microsoft turned the place over to the Florida user groups. They are hosting the first “]InBetween[“ conference. There is an incredible amount of content being offered, for free: .Net Code Camps, Day of Agile, Day of Silverlight, .Net University, DotNetNuke University, Exam Crams, IT Pro Camps, Office Communication Server, The ToolShed, Train the Trainer, VSTS University, and SQL Saturday and SQL University (on Sunday).

You can find out more, including links and a complete schedule at:

http://www.devfish.net/articles/inbetween/

Of special interest to me though, and the reason for this post is SQL Saturday. Either through divine intervention or a cosmic prank, I will be presenting at the SQL Saturday doing a session on Full Text Searching. You can register and get more info here:

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/eventhome.aspx?eventid=5

And see the full schedule here:

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/schedule.aspx

It’s quite an honor, there are some big names speaking there such as Andy Warren and Brian Knight. I also see that another Birminghamian, Barry Ralston will be speaking.

So if you will be in Orlando for TechEd, plan on staying late or arriving early and attend one of the many InBetween conferences. This promises to be a great event, and best of all it’s FREE. That’s right, you don’t even have to be a TechEd attendee to come, just show up and pick your event. (Of course, the event organizers would appreciate it if you would register!)

Microhoo not to be

Seems like Steve Ballmer doesn’t mind working weekends. Microsoft has withdrawn it’s offer to buy Yahoo. Check out the Marketwatch column:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/microsoft-withdraws-proposal-acquire-yahoo/story.aspx?guid={3A657B77-2EDE-4B6A-96E9-DD197C07850C}

If you want to pass it along, I’ve also shrinksterized it in what coincidentally is one of the coolest Shrinkster links I’ve seen:

http://shrinkster.com/xml

Ultimately I think this is probably good for Microsoft. It would have been a huge uphill struggle getting this deal approved, especially in the European Union. For Yahoo it would have been a mixed bag, I think it would have been good for the shareholders, but I don’t think their IT arm would have been overly happy about it.

In other interesting news that I think is uber cool but has nothing to do with Microhoo, Gizmodo is reporting a MacGyver movie is in the works.

http://gizmodo.com/386877/holy-crap-macgyver-blockbuster-film-coming

Thanks to the Twitterverse for the news, @dewaldp and @sweekly.

See, I TOLD you Apple is the Evil Empire

Some time back, I wrote a blog post describing Apple as “The Evil Empire”. Now a nationally known figure is adding her voice to the chorus. In this CNet Buzz Report, Molly Wood describes Apple as her “bad boyfriend”. They The guy who forces her to look good, tell her what cell phone carrier to use, etc without caring about her.

I thought that was a pretty apt description, and it really helps delineate the differences between the Apple philosophy and everyone else. Apple keeps tight control over their domain. Who cares if the new Air only has 1 USB, no firewire, no internet, no optical drive, no media card reader, and no expansion slots? Hey it LOOKS good. And those pretty new i-Phones? Oh, you can only use the carrier THEY pick out for you. Third party apps? Only if they give their blessing, which they still haven’t done. But hey, it LOOKS good.

Contrast that with both Windows and Linux. You can run the OS on any machine you wish. Windows Mobile? sure, any company who wants to license it for their device or carrier great with them. Heck Microsoft was even so open they let the i-Phone work with Exchange. But people complain that Microsoft isn’t open enough? And after Apple’s latest stunt of trying to force Safari down everyone’s throats via the iTunes update, I’d better not hear any Mac-Head deride the Windows Update process as “sneaky”.

It’s no wonder people are resorting to installing Windows on their MacBooks, it’s the only way they can get the freedom to get any work done!

Happy Birthday Visual Studio

According to this article in Platinum Bay, today March 19th 2008 is Visual Studio’s 11th birthday. I have used many IDE’s over the years for development, but I would argue all day long that Visual Studio is the best, period. Everyone who contributed to that original1997 product and put their sweat into it since deserves a round of applause and a hearty thank you from the development community.

Happy Birthday Visual Studio!

Doug Turnure MS Developer Evangelist To Speak at BSDA on Silverlight 2.0

Just thought I’d share some exciting news, Doug Turnure the Microsoft Developer Evangelist for our South East area will be in Birmingham on Thursday, March 13th. He will be at the Birmingham Software Developers Association and will be telling us about Silverlight 2.0 and other cool stuff that was announced at Mix 08 this week. Afterward we’ll be having a geek dinner at Jim and Nicks on Oxmoor.

The BSDA meeting will take place at New Horizons in Homewood, beginning at 6:30 pm. I’d suggest getting there a bit early to get a good seat, then be sure to join us afterward for food and more geekery at Jim and Nicks.

The Arcane Internet

I know, I promised to get you up to speed with SQL Server 2008 after my Virtual PC post yesterday. Sadly a nasty thing called work got in the way, and I’ve had  couple of late nighters. It’s coming, I promise. Meanwhile, a few tidbits from around the web.

If you’re a developer, you’re probably aware that MIX 08 has kicked off in Vegas. Sadly, I ain’t there, and am insanely jealous of everyone who is, but that’s life. That doesn’t mean we can’t join in virtually though. The keynote was broadcast live, it was really cool to be able to watch it as it happened (or as much as I could, as I did have to work and wound up listening more than watching). If you did miss it, you can still catch the recording at http://visitmix.com/blogs/Joshua/Day-1-Keynote/ . There were a lot of big announcements, including the release of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 and talk about Silverlight for Mobile apps. In addition all the sessions will be available as videos 24 hours after they are presented, so tomorrow (Thursday) we should start seeing some content.

But Microsoft isn’t the only ones producing Mix video on the web. The folks at CodeBetter.com are using Qik to stream live video to the web. I watched a good interview with Miguel de Icaza earlier, I see another one since I left work. Check them out on their Qik site at http://qik.com/codebetter .

The Mix conference isn’t the only place producing video. Earlier tonight the North Dallas .Net Users Group streamed their meeting over the web. I got to watch a few minutes of it but needed to get back to my late night work. But wow, what a concept, a local user group streaming their sessions live over the net. Kudos to them for doing something cool. If I can get all the bugs worked out, and of course get the presenters consent I may very well stream our next Birmingham Software Developers Association meeting live on the web. No promises yet though, lots to work out.

Finally, you may ask how did I learn of all this wonderful content? Twitter! Boy I have to thank Keith Elder, I’ve picked up a lot of good tips since I started. From now on I’m going to be like Jeff Barnes and do everything The Elder says!

Hey, I guess they’re wrong. With all this great Mix content flowing out on the web, what happens in Vegas DOESN’T stay in Vegas!

Don’t Uninstall Visual Studio 2005 Yet!

One of the great benefits of Visual Studio 2008 is the ability for it to target multiple .Net Frameworks. This means, in theory you could go ahead and begin using Visual Studio 2008 even though you still need to write apps that are 2005 / .Net 2.0 compliant. You might be tempted to go ahead and uninstall 2005. And that would be fine if you are only doing .Net development. But wait…

If you are still doing SQL Server BIDS (Business Intelligence Developer Studio) then don’t uninstall Visual Studio 2005! Currently there’s no support in VS2008 for doing SQL Server 2005 BIDS Development. If you uninstall VS2005 you won’t be able to do any more BIDS work. Trust me, I found out the hard way.

After uninstalling VS2005, I went to do a BIDS project and that’s when I got hit with the nasty surprise. The uninstall had also removed the Dev Environment that was shared with BIDS. I tried to rerun the install of my SQL Server Developer Edition, but for some reason it thought I wanted to upgrade. It kept giving me the message “You cannot upgrade a version of SQL Server from the GUI, you must use the command line.”

I finally had to reinstall VS2005, along with all it’s service packs. After that I was able to work on my BIDS projects again. So take it from me, if you are still doing SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence projects, Visual Studio 2005 still has some life in it yet.

Alabama Code Camp

The sixth Alabama Code Camp is coming up February 23rd, 2008. Registration is now open, as is the call for speakers. Many, including myself have submitted, you can see them by going to the Alabama Code Camp site and clicking on the speakers link. The list of speakers is very impressive, no less than eight MVPs, and at least two authors. I’m humbled to be amongst such distinguished company!

Here’s the synopsis for my two sessions, in case you are curious:

Introduction to SQL Server Integration Services

Whether you are creating a full blown data warehouse, doing a data conversion from an old system to a new one, or integrating applications together SQL Server Integration Services can help. Get an overview of this powerful tool built into SQL Server.

The Developer Experience

Learn about tips and tricks to enhance your experience as a developer both in the physical world and the virtual world. See hardware that can make your life easier, software additions for Windows and Visual Studio, even how just a few tweaks in the Visual Studio options can make your experience as a developer more pleasant and productive.

This is shaping up to be an impressive code camp, so don’t hesitate and get registered today!

Visual Studio 2008 Loadfest – Birmingham

On Thursday night, January 24th 2008 the BUG.NET group in conjunction with Microsoft is sponsoring a Visual Studio 2008 Loadfest. Bring your laptop or desktop and lets load VS 2008 on it! The first 75 people to register will get a free copy of VS2008. In addition there will be some fun and games, there will be several XBox 360’s and huge TVs to play games on. (Sorry, no give aways of the XBoxes or TVs, but you still get to have fun with them.)

The event will begin at 6:30 pm across from the New Horizons training center,  and will last about 2 hours. (See the link below for more details and directions).

To attend and get your free copy of VS2008 you must register! Go to

https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=124185

No cost, but like I said you must register. See you there!

An Early Christmas from Redmond

They’re here! Today Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 RTM. If you have an MSDN subscription you can download today and start producing all those new .Net 3.5 applications.

Also released today via the connect.microsoft.com site is CTP 5 of SQL Server 2008. It’s my understanding in this CTP most of the features are working, except for clustering.

I can see I won’t be getting any sleep tonight.

.Net University – BizTalk

Earlier this week I was privilidged to attend the first .Net University for BizTalk. It was a very informative day long session, I feel like I now have a grasp on at least the fundementals of BizTalk and can talk intelligently about it. I have a long way to go, of course, but this was a great launching point.

If you are not familiar with .Net University, you need to check out their website http://www.dotnet-u.com/ . All of the slide decks, labs, and other courseware are availble not only for you to look at, but to use in doing your own presentation. Your user group or business could put on it’s very own .Net University using the supplied materials. Don’t worry if you are not a guru, they are even publishing videos of the sessions for you to watch and see how the “pros” did it. Currently courseware is available for .Net 3.0 and BizTalk, and the video sessions for .Net 3.0 were just released. They videoed the presentations at the BizTalk session I was in, so I would expect them to be released in the near future. Coming soon will be courseware for Sharepoint and Silverlight.

.Net University was the brainchild of Microsoft Developer Evangelist Doug Tunure ( http://blogs.msdn.com/dougturn/ ). Recently he and Mark Dunn of Dunn Training (http://www.dunntraining.com/) went to TechEd in Asia and used .Net U there. Mark Dunn recorded interviews and talked about it in a recent Dot Net Rocks episode (#288: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=288 ). Take a listen, they do a better job of explaining it than I can. Mark, by the way, was also one of the presenters at the BizTalk session I was in.

If your user group is looking for a good opportunity to reach out to the community, consider putting on your own .Net U. You can do it in one day, or break it into two or four sessions. Looks like there will be a lot of good material to get you started, and you can even get certificates to present to your attendees.

A Developer’s Guide to Installing SQL Server 2005 – Part 1 – Selecting a version

As a developer of applications that use SQL Server in some way, it can be valuable to have a database local to your box. It can be used for development, testing, or debugging in an off line environment. While there are many versions of SQL Server 2005, there are only two versions that are really suitable for the developer’s computer: SQL Server Express With Advanced Options, and SQL Server Developers Edition.

The first, SQL Server 2005 Express, is free. There are actually two versions of Express, the standard and the one entitled SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services SP2. It can be a little hard to find, so here’s a handy link: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/express/bb410792.aspx The standard edition does not include Full Text Search, Reporting Services, or the SQL Server Management Studio Express. These are all features that you, as a developer will want.

The other version of SQL Server that’s geared toward developers is the SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition. This version has the same features as the Enterprise Edition, but it’s only licensed for a single developer to access. It also comes with the full blown BIDS (Business Intelligence Developer Studio) tools. It’s not free, however it’s not expensive either. At only 49.99 it’s priced so even a small one person development shop can easily afford it. This link has more info, including a link to purchase:

http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.aspx?view=22&pcid=f544888c-2638-48ed-9f0f-d814e8b93ca0&type=ovr

If you have an MSDN License, the SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition is included with it and can be downloaded via your subscription.

So as a developer, which version version should you install? That answer is easy. Both.

Yes, both. The Express edition will allow you to perform small scale testing, let multiple users bang away at your solution and let you perform some small measure of scalability testing. With it’s database size limited to 4 gig, it may nor may not be big enough to hold your entire database, but it’s certainly large enough for a good hunk of your data. The Developer Edition will give you all of the tools and let you emulate your Enterprise system, at least in terms of the database sizes and structures. However since it’s licensed only for the developer, you won’t be able to have multiple users access it.

So you’ve decided OK, you want to install. If you’re not a trained DBA there a few gotcha’s you should know about when installing SQL Server. By default, not all of the features are installed. In the next few posts, I’ll show step by step instructions on how to install SQL Server for your development workstation.

Apple – The New "Evil Empire"

First, in the interest of disclosure let me state right up front that I’m a “Microsoft fanboy”. Sue me. As a professional developer for the last 20 plus years, I think they make some really great stuff, and do a lot to get the word out to the developer community.

I say this because I really get tired of the gushing lately over how wonderful Apple is and how evil Microsoft is. Hmm, let’s contrast a moment, and I think the recent product announcements of the new Zunes makes a good place to do so.

For those who haven’t heard, Microsoft has just announced the release of some new Zunes, the Zune 80 (80 gig HD) and the Zune Flash series, which will have flash drives and come in 4 and 8 gig sizes. The original Zune will now be known as the Zune 30. There are a lot of cool new features in the interface, such as Podcasting, and the removal of the 3 day limit on listening to wi-fi shared songs, not to mention it just looks easier to use.

What’s really nice is all the early adopters of the original Zune 30’s won’t be left in the cold. There will be free upgrades so the older Zune 30’s will have all the same new software features as the newer Zunes.

Let’s contrast that with Apple and its iPhone and iTouch units. The iTouch, supposedly just a stripped down iPhone, yet there are many features such as e-mail that could be there, but are lacking for no apparent technical reason that anyone can explain.

Then there’s the iPhone itself, locked down worse than Fort Knox. For those who believe that when they plunk down 600 plus dollars for something it should be theirs to do with as they want, the very first upgrade rendered the iPhone into a brick. And once it’s bricked, expect no help from Apple.

Now, I wouldn’t expect them to try and restore everything, but the least they could do is a factory reset to brand new condition. I’d say that was very reasonable. But nope, you’re just stuck with a brick.

From everything I have been able to gather, there’s no real technical reason for the upgrade to force the phone to brick status. I could understand perhaps forcing a reset to “new” status, or that some apps would not work, but the complete paper weight scenario seems like nothing more than punishment on Apple’s part.

Before someone points out there are online sites with “debricking” software, my point is not about the phone, but about the attitude from the company that puts it out. Further, I also realize that ‘hacking’ the iPhone falls outside the terms of service. Cancel my account, make me reset to factory new condition, maybe charge me a twenty five or fifty dollar service fee to do the reset, OK those all sound reasonable. But bricking my expensive phone? Seems a little harsh don’t you think?

So let’s see here, on one hand we have a company that is rewarding it’s early adopter customers by making sure their devices will have all the latest greatest features at no extra charge.

On the other hand we have a company that requires you to use your phone with only they software they approve of. Fall outside that use, and your punishment: to have the sexiest, sleekest brick around.

Hmm, now who is sounding evil?