The Microsoft Sync Framework

I gave a presentation at the NZ .NET Code Camp at Whitireia Polytech, Porirua on Sunday 14 June 2009.

What Was Covered	Overview of the Microsoft Sync Framework Enabled scenarios, vision, approach Demo: Prerequisites and Installing Synchronizing existing endpoints using the Sync Framework Exposing data as FeedSync compatible RSS and ATOM feeds
The Microsoft Sync Framework	Access to your data on any computer, device, or service across disparate applications.
Slide Presentation	Click here to download the slide show presentation for the Microsoft Sync Framework
Impressions	I was in a story-telling mood yesterday.  I explained that I had just laid my mother to rest, so was interrupted in my preparation.  I sensed sympathy for my situation and no animosity for being under-prepared. In the course of my preparation, I discovered two quite disparate explanations of the Sync Framework from Microsoft.  The first (which I had studiously prepared) was the offline caching and automatic synchronisation that SQL Server enabled via the Compact Edition.  The second (which was rushed) was the manual coding of new providers and their exception rules via the SDK. It ended up be a facilitated discussion (is that lazy of me? or is that being dynamic and confident and adaptable?)  Anyway, questions were asked and answered, so feedback was mainly positive.
Questions	I was asked “Does the provider enable the use of security credentials and/or encryption?” From the material I had presented, it appeared that since the protocol could be specified, that therefore if HTTPS was specified, then encryption would be enabled.  Also, as the providers encapsulated callbacks to handle exceptions such as conflict resolution, it is logical to assume that the providers are completely programmable to handle any security (login) requirements. I promised to look this up.  Here’s the answer: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2e9bec3b-9deb-4620-a955-266e656d8fa4&displaylang=en
About the Presenter	James Hippolite remembers being 15 in the 5th form at Nelson College, when he sat up one night coding a bio-rhythms application on his newly acquired second-hand Apple IIe.  At 3am, he ran into his mother’s bedroom to excitedly inform her he’d successfully finished.  Her measured response allowed him to continue to feel good about coding. James holds Microsoft certification as a Professional Developer (MCPD: Web Developer), IT Professional (MCITP: Database Developer) and Trainer (MCT). He lives in Wellington and is currently employed full time in a large corporate and loving the regular hours that non-consultants enjoy.

MSDN Unplugged Roadshow Wellington

Date/Time

Friday, 5 June 2009 @ 9:am - 12:30pm

Product(s)

Microsoft Expression Blend,Microsoft Silverlight,Windows 7

Audience(s)

Developer

Presenter(s)

Mike Zeff, Nigel Parker

Event Overview

Session 1: Windows 7 for Developers

Windows 7 contains many new features for developers that allow you to create very rich applications for your users, including the ability to touch-enable your own applications. This session will cover how you can take advantage of new Windows 7 features using .NET 3.5 to build rich client applications and we’ll also take a look at what’s coming in .NET 4.0. Presented by ISV Developer Advisor, Mike Zeff.

Session 2: Taking your Web experience to the next level with Silverlight 3

Internet Explorer 8 has been released and Silverlight 3 was announced recently at MIX ‘09. This session will show you how you can take advantage of Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 to create stunning web applications that can run both inside and outside the browser. We’ll also show you how to take advantage of exciting features in IE8 that make your web site more ‘sticky’ for your users. Presented by Web Developer Advisor, Nigel Parker.

Impressions

A good introduction to Multi-Touch programming for Windows 7 using Visual Studio 2010 and XAML.

Matti had a good question: "When with IE8 support HTML5?"  The background to that question is that HTML5 is a new standard everybody else is adopting except Microsoft, because it's a Silverlight killer.  No official answer (from Microsoft) exists.

I advertised next weekend's Code Camp.

I won the web-cam draw!  All-in-all a profitable meeting.

How to: Design and Develop an Application to Ensure its Quality

I gave a presentation last night:

Title

How To: Design and Develop an Application to Ensure its Quality

Audience

Victoria University of Wellington, 3rd year “Software Engineering” students (SWEN 301 = COMP 301)

Attendees

About 30

Date/Time

Thursday 14 May @ 4pm

Slides

Ensuring Quality

Impressions

The first half of my presentation, defining and designing quality, was taken straight out of the book.  Specifically, straight out of the “Analysing Requirements and Defining .NET Solution Architectures” exam.  The second half of my presentation, coding quality, came out of my head and covered training, reviewing and testing.

I could see some heads nodding in agreement as I was speaking, always a good sign.  I could see some heads nodding in weariness, never a good sign.

The question time is always my favourite, because it’s then that I can most accurately gauge whether what I have been saying is “scratching the itch” of the intended audience. 

The first question was along the lines of “great, you’ve told us some more theory, now what about you personally?  What were some of your failures in your career that will help us to avoid pain and embarrassment?”  I won’t record here what I told them in answer, suffice to say it amused them..

The PhD student in the audience had come with slightly different expectations.  I think he was hoping for more concrete examples of measurements and statistics for writing good code.  My rather lame response was that if/when I’m inclined to worry about that kind of thing, then I turn on FxCop to analyse my code for me.

I admitted to being a “lazy coder” in that I enjoy/prefer using objects that I drag onto the page from a toolbox, rather than coding everything by hand.

Definition of terms became important.  I needed to very clearly define “Agile” and “Peer”.  To me, peer programming is not necessarily the Extreme Programming definition of working side-by-side on the same computer.  It just means working as a team on the same project.  To me, Agile just means having many, quick iterations, rather than waterfall software lifecycle methodology.  I hadn’t realised they considered themselves Software Engineers.  To me, there are hardware/network engineers vs. software developers.

Evaluation

Hi James,

Your presentation today was really good. I believe that students love to have you coming from the really world to share your invaluable experience with them. Thank you very much again for your valuable time and your efforts, in particular while you are so busy. I really appreciate it.

Best wishes,
Dr Hui Ma
Lecturer

Right Sizing Agile Development - MSDN Magazine Webinar

I logged into a web seminar this morning:

Title	Right Sizing Agile Development
Audience	MSDN Magazine subscribers and/or developers
Presenter	Steve McConnell is CEO and Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software where he writes books and articles, teaches classes, and oversees Construx’s software development practices. Steve is the author of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (2006), Code Complete (1993, 2004), Rapid Development (1996), Software Project Survival Guide (1998), and Professional Software Development (2004). His first two books won Software Development magazine's Jolt Excellence award for best programming books of their years. Steve has worked in the desktop software industry since 1984 and has expertise in rapid development methodologies, project estimation, software construction practices, and third-party contract management. In 1998, readers of Software Development magazine named Steve one of the three most influential people in the software industry along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. Steve was Editor in Chief of IEEE Software magazine from 1998-2002. Steve is on the Panel of Experts that advises the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) project and was Chair of the IEEE Computer Society’s Professional Practices Committee. Steve earned a Bachelor’s degree from Whitman College and a Master’s degree in software engineering from Seattle University. Read more about Steve at www.stevemcconnell.com.
Brief	In this talk, Steve McConnell draws on Construx's extensive consulting work to dissect Agile development. McConnell names the Agile practices that have worked well for Construx's clients, describes the failure modes of Agile practices that have failed to live up to the hype, and explains how to right size Agile development for your organization.
Date/Time	Friday 17 April @ 7:00AM (NZT)
Slides	http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=140117&s=1&k=1565037F2927EB78039F829A25208578
Impressions	I liked how he explained the differences between: Extreme Programming: lots of iterations of Analysis, Design, Build, Test (rinse and repeat several times) Agile Programming: few iterations of ADBT (staged deployments i.e. versioning) Waterfall Programming: no iterations (single monolithic)
Further Comments	I missed the first 10 minutes.

Wellington SQL Server User Group Meeting April 2009

I attended a presentation last night:
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Title	Wearing multiple hats.  Being a DBA and a developer.
Audience	Wellington SQL Server User Group
Presenter	Dave Dustin – Wolters Kluwer Health Dave is also convenor of the Auckland SQL Server User Group
Brief	Given the size of many New Zealand companies and their respective IT departments, many IT professionals wear multiple hats.  Dave will be giving his view of coming from the development world into the DBA role, and what it means if you need to work in both areas.
Attendees	About 20 – a good number for us
Date/Time	Thursday 16 April @ 5:30pm
Slides	Coming
Impressions	It was unfortunate that Dave’s security key was not present, so that he was unable to start his laptop and show us his slides.  However, he did remarkably well from just memory. I was reminded of the usefulness of Test-Driven Development (TDD) aka “test-first” or “fail-first”: Before you code, write a test which fails. Then write the code that makes the test succeed Then you have a permanent regression test case
Further Comments	He was not able to do the second half of his presentation, which was about Visual Studio Team System 2008: Database Pro edition – GDR.

What's New in Microsoft SQL Services - My DNUG Presentation

I gave a presentation today:

Title	What’s New in Microsoft SQL Services
Brief	Come hear how SQL Data Services is evolving to provide rich relational database capabilities and how easy it is to take existing database applications and extend them to the cloud. Learn how SQL Data Services provides highly available and scalable relational database storage and capabilities while allowing you to leverage existing SQL Server knowledge, protocols, client libraries and tools. Hear about Microsoft's plans to accelerate delivery of the key relational data capabilities you've asked for through a service endpoint that directly supports the T-SQL language and the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) communications protocol as well as their rich support for breadth and open source development languages, frameworks and client libraries.
Bio	James Hippolite started programming on an Apple IIe, at the age of 14. After graduating with a bachelor degree in Information Systems from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, he started working with small systems relational databases, like dBase, Paradox, FoxPro and Microsoft Access. In 1991 he founded Mana Information Systems, a company for SME who couldn't afford their own IT departments. As the lead developer, he developed small to medium WinForms applications using SQL Server, Visual Basic and latterly ASP.  In 2003 James developed in C# his first .NET web application, an internal metrics reporting tool for his new employer, Telecom New Zealand, utilising SQL Server stored procedures and .NET classes. After finally being convinced by their absolute ease of use, James finally converted to using ORMs full-time in 2008. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.  He has contributed lectures on Microsoft Certification and SQL Server Reporting Services to the INETA and PASS communities. James lives in Wellington and is currently employed full time in a large corporate and loving the regular hours that non-consultants enjoy.
Audience	Wellington Dot Net User Group
Attendees	About 20 – I don’t view this negatively.  It was a niche subject.
Date/Time	Wednesday 15 April @ 6pm @ Xero
Slides	What’s New in Microsoft SQL Services
Impressions	I had to break the first rule of presentations to developers: I had no demonstrations!  This was because the Invitational CTP won’t be available until next month.  So I couldn’t go online to demo what I was talking about.  However, the 20 slides fitted well within the 1 hour that I had, with plenty of time for questions through-out.  The pizza arrived 5 minutes early, so I had to wrap up the last 4 slides, which I don’t think anybody minded! The questions were right on the ball, and added to the body of this presentation.  Specifically: How will the new TDS requests be protected from network sniffing?  It appeared that TDS + SSL is an option, but I need to investigate whether this is a connection string setting, or is implemented in some other way. What is the site where I can register my interest to be included in the CTP trial? Microsoft Connect What is Microsoft’s revenue model?  I.e. what will it cost me to use this thing?  Nobody knows yet, but look to the Google model of transaction throughput + database size as a likely indicator. Is anybody else offering this? Amazon’s S3 Google’s Big Table
Further Comments	The slide show was a download from the Mix 09 web site, which I then modified to the fact that: I couldn’t demo anything I put my name instead of Nigel Ellis, Architect, Microsoft SQL Services I took notes from Nigel’s talk and included them in my slide notes pages.  This worked really well.  Unfortunately, because the original format was PowerPoint 2007, when I converted it to PowerPoint 2003, most of the text came across as pictures, so I lost some of the nice transitional animation. I got to use my new MCT credential in my introduction slide for only the second time so far (first time was for the PASS presentation earlier this month).  I also show the Telecom logo and gen-i’s Microsoft Gold Partner cred.  I just think it is polite to acknowledge that Telecom have permitted me time to prepare these presentations. Mark Carroll from Microsoft turned up half-way through my presentation.  He didn’t make me any more nervous, but I wonder whether he was auditing my presentation for any particular reason.  I hope it was to ascertain whether I would make a good MVP.  We shall see.

ORM for DBAs

I gave a presentation today:

Title	ORM 101: Object Relational Mappers for Database Administrators
Sub-title	Why Should I Be Afraid?
Audience	Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) members
Attendees	About 18
Date/Time	Wednesday 1 April @ 12pm EST Thursday 2 April @ 5AM NZT
Slides	Introduction to ORM for DBA
Impressions	Newbie mistake: I ran out of material!  However, I was able to fill in with “Why get Microsoft Certified?” until the questions started flowing. The questions were right on the ball, and added to the body of this presentation.  Specifically: What does the generated code look like?  This sparked a reminder that I was meant to show an example of partial classes.  However, I couldn’t get the new method in the partial class to work!  I realise now that the reason why was because I forgot about the NameSpace of the generated code. How does the dynamic SQL avoid injection attack?  The answer, “via parameters” I was able to show by opening the code. Can you have different permissions/applications using the same DAL?  I talked about an example solution I’m working on that has multiple Web Applications working from the same Database via the same Data Access Layer. How does it work? “Duh, I dunno.”  I’m a lazy programmer.  If it works, it just works. Can you connect to more than one database at a time? Great question.  This sparked an explanation of the SubSonic providers and the way that they put each of their objects into separate folders. This further sparked an explanation of some of SubSonic’s provider options, where: Pluralization can be preserved or eliminated; Prefixes can be preserved or removed.
Further Comments	I was persuaded to put in an April Fool’s Day joke.  I did this by passing on a bogus Microsoft Announcement (attributed to Greg Low) that Azure was replacing SQL Server for the retail market.  Apparently, according to Mike the convenor, I was sufficiently convincing until I put up the “April Fool” slide.  Boy, it’s tough talking to a wall of silence! I discovered SubSonic 2.1 is LINQ-like, but not actual LINQ.  SubSonic 3.0 is LINQ. I made the decision not to bore the DBA audience with the creation of the presentation layer, and to concentrate on the flow of data through the layers instead.  However, I had the time, so need to think that through better next time. The subtitle was decided because DBA’s traditionally hate Dynamic SQL for 2 reasons: SQL Injection Attack – alleviated by use of parameters Store Procedure Superior Compiled Performance – is a myth The convenor did not read my bio (as I expected) so I was forced to introduce myself.  I able to speak with confidence from my credentialing (as at this time) as: Microsoft Certified Professional Developer: Web Developer Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Database Developer Microsoft Certified Trainer Microsoft Certified Solution Developer .NET