CodeCampRDU - spring '08

CodeCampRDU - spring '08 was great!

Here's my WCF Basics presentation slides and code:

Demo Slides...  WCF Basics - Demo.ppt (141 KB)

Demo Code: (the content is really from Dan' Wahlin's video / blog tutorial / code ) so grab it from there - Thanks Dan!

other Slides: (content abstracted from MSDN - wcf pages) WCF Basics - Presentation.ppt (99 KB)

 

2/16/2008 4:20:01 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)      Comments [0]  geek | TRINUG

How bad could it be?

Could have been... I suppose... But not too shabby after all

Last night was a first cut of starting up a loosely-coupled (to an agenda) gathering of .net geeks for an evening of good conversation, good food, good drink, and even some good code/tips/cool things. All in all, I'd say it turned out pretty good.
Only 5 of us showed up and that gave us a chance to get to know Mike who is an advanced computer science teacher at Wake Tech.
Josh showed us his css trick to extend columns the full length of the page - very simple and works well. He just takes the Margin-bottom and Padding-Bottom and sets their value to something unrealistically large like 30,000.

we used SharedView to see Josh's screen - very cool! works for Vista and XP all at the same time, free and easy too!
download here...
using it help here...

www.trinug.com has been re-incarnated!  (just don't tell the Chinese gov) 
- big thanks to Josh and Rob

9/19/2007 7:31:20 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

Patience

Q:

 

Uhm - the new site does not have a fraction of the old site functionality and content, what happend?

 

A:

 

It’s day one.

 

With the old site we couldn’t extend it or work with it (note unchanged banner after 3.5 years) for a variety of reasons.

Some political, some technical (dnn).

 

The usual movers and shakers have since grown quiet with ideas and energy. (grown tired of pushing an immovable object)

 

Now that the new site is available I expect great things of it! 

 

…as soon as some movers and shakers become aware and make some free time.

 

 

 

9/17/2007 2:45:38 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

Hot Topics - CSS then Tylers

Tonight was the 'Hot Topics' meeting for TRINUG and we focused on CSS again. I covered a few examples of layout, good tricks, but my presentation was lame and took too much time. With what little time was left Mike did a good job of showing some more of the fundamental syntax of CSS going into boxes, margins, padding, positioning. His approach works very well, showing a sample then the code, then making a small change and showing it's affect... then repeat. All his code fit in a website and a few pages so it's easy to follow and pass out to others to work with...nice. I need to rework my topic into that format.

Many thanks to Tanya from Compuserve for letting us use their space, and Faye really surprised us by ordering us a few pizzas from the Mellow Mushroom downstairs... Nice!   This is the first time we've had a TRINUG meeting there (i've been to a few IASA meetings there) and the facillities were awesome - 10 folks fit in easily and we could have squeezed another 30 if we needed, good projector, and internet connections. 

Went to Tylers after and chatted with Mike, Jeremy, Tom, and Rob. Nice place to hang out, eat and drink, and talk geek.
As is often the case conversation turned to how to improve, adjust, etc in order to make the meeting more worthwhile. We're considering dumping the regular format for this timeslot and just going to a 'geek dinner' kind of thing where there's no particular topic, just bring along a laptop and talk. 

 

8/30/2007 5:30:48 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

MapPoint

Here's the toc page for MapPoint resources:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anch_mappointmain.asp

I'd like to use this for a web services demo. (WinForms SIG)

6/19/2006 7:58:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [2]  geek | learning adventures | TRINUG

Design Patterns

This is cool!

http://www.dofactory.com/Framework/Framework.aspx

Lots of code, well organized, ties in with 2 of the Design Patterns books that are my favorites, and not too expensive. Wow.

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture                  Heads First Design Patterns
       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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6/17/2006 9:16:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [2]  geek | learning adventures | TRINUG

Architect SIG - Links

 

Having a syllabus = good.

…even if the dates need to change to allow us to get more coverage/absorbtion time on each topic.

a good road map will hopefully inspire folks to gather auxillary/supporting info before the topics get presented and share that with the group.

 

as an example, I came across a few nuggets on EggHeadCafe last night:

 

ADO.NET 2.0 Object Mapper To DataBase Tables And Stored Procedures

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/adonet_source_code_generator.asp

 

 

.NET 2.0 Generics - Load A Business Class In A Clueless Database Layer

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/dotnet_generics_application_layers.asp

 

Top 10 Must Have Features in O/R Mapping Tools

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/PrintSearchContent.asp?LINKID=973

 

ASP.NET Beginner's Guide To Creating UI, Business, and Data Layers in Applications - Part I

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/aspnet_how_to_create_object_oriented_applications.asp

 

 

and here’s one that may be too much of a diversion, but after reading it, I’m kinda curious…

 

Bamboo Prevalence: .NET Object Persistence Engine
(Look Ma! - No DataBase!)

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20031019.asp

 

 

 

6/2/2006 4:55:46 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

Architect SIG

 

Rick, Chuck –

 

Thanks for getting this one going and giving it life!

 

I was surprised, impressed, and very happy to see so many folks showing up and and showing interest in this topic. I really hope we can continue to get this level of attendance and participation.

 

Are we all still on GO for the next meeting Mon June12 ? …I am J

 

re: format  - I like the peer discussion! it’s a much better model than having just one person teaching. very cool to witness people from around the table asking questions and challenging each others’ ideas. I can’t wait to see what happens when we get into some code demos.

 

re: content – This is definitely kinda advanced stuff… but with all the discussion it seems like even the toughest concepts will become graspable. I know some folks were overwhelmed by the new vocabulary and firehose of concepts, but I encourage everyone to stick with it. The more we teach each other, the more we learn.

 

I am looking forward to seeing Gopal’s architecture at the next meeting – and hearing about the real world design problems he has developed solutions to handle.  

 

After reading some more about the CSLA, I am also very interested to see Rick’s presentation of a “sliver” in hopes that a less complex example will make it easier to get my mind around Rocky’s architecture.

 

The discussion seems like it will be quite interesting and helpful to increase my understanding of how all the “architecture” words I’ve been absorbing for years translate into real, usable frameworks. Talking about this stuff with others helps to clarify what a framework really means, and how it could be used.

 

Meeting with this group of folks last night inspired me now and I’m going to re-read Marco Bellinaso’s architecture approach and try to understand it further in hopes of adding it into the mix of approaches for compare/contrast. (and maybe even dig up some Martin Fowler books)

 

 

I finally figured where the Overview Article was on Barry Bossman’s website:

http://www.primos.com.au/primos/Default.aspx?PageContentID=50&tabid=67

 

it’s a tough read, but after a while it starts to make sense. One hint – at the top of the page there’s a link to each of the 14 pages of the overview. It helped me to go through each of these and just read the first couple of sentences (and look at the pictures before trying to dive into the details.

 

If anyone else try’s to download the code for this example and wants to chat about it before the next meeting, let me know. I hope to go through it and the overview article this weekend.

 

 

-g

 

6/1/2006 9:51:35 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

does book use Enterprise Library?

5/26/2006 5:41:14 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

Proposal for ASP.NET v2.0 SIG - summer '06

Here's the note I sent out to explain where I'd like to take the ASP.NET group for the next few months:

---

I recently picked up a new ASP.NET 2.0 book and was flipping through it when EURIKA! …I had this idea that I’d like to propose:

I think this text would make an excellent companion to our study of ASP.NET 2.0

If everyone is in agreement, I would like to begin using it as soon as our next meeting in 2 weeks (June 7)
Please send me comments!

Here’s my rationalization:

We’ve covered many basics of ASP.NET and now is a good time to pull those concepts together into actual websites.

Articles on ASP.NET are plentiful and helpful, however I think that this book could offer some greater benefit by providing continuity. By not only introducing the concepts of a good DAL, BLL, UI layering, the book then follows by using this framework consistently in the 6 sections of their example website. (see link below)

Using a book will enable folks to know in advance what the content for each meeting will be, run through the code and try the examples out at home during the month between meetings. For the first ½ of this year I’ve been trying to get info out before each meeting, but there hasn’t been much lead time so the usefulness of that info has been less than optimal.

With more lead time I think that a larger number of folks will be able to contribute to the discussions and possibly even bring supporting articles, websites, reference material to share with the group.

The lead time will also allow folks to work at home at their own pace and “drink from the water fountain” as aposed to “drinking from a firehose”

Advanced developers may be enticed to join our discussions… while this book lays out the fundamentals (sprinkled with some cool power user tricks), it does that in a framework that is architectually sound, and quite likely re-usable by the guru level coders in our group.

it’s a darn good book.

---

The book I’m suggesting is:

    ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming
    Problem - Design - Solution
    Marco Bellinaso - Wrox Press, 2006
    Pages: 600
    ISBN: 0764584642

it’s a $39.99 book, but available from Amazon for $25 (or even less for a used copy)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764584642/002-6209444-0292829

---

Here’s the syllabus I’m proposing:

June: Chapters 1-4
    1 – Intro to the Project: TheBeerHouse
    2 – Devleloping the Site Design
    3 – Planning an Architecture
    4 – Membership and User Profiling
July: Chapter 5 – News and Article Management
Aug: Chapter 6 – Opinion Polls
Sept: Chapter 7 - Newsletters
Oct: Chapter 8 - Forums
Nov: Chapter 9 – E-commerce
Dec: Chapter 10 – Personalization and WebParts

The stuff covered in Chapters 1-4 are very similar to the demos we’ve done earlier this year. You can get chapter 1 from Amazon, then go to Marco’s Blog to get some exerpts of the other chapters. You can download the code from Marco’s website or from Wrox.

---

Here’s some related links including the completed demo website in action:

The main Wrox Press site:
http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/

The "P2P" programmer message forum - locate the forum for this book and post your questions there:
http://p2p.wrox.com/default.asp?CAT_ID=23

The author's sample website:
http://www.dotnet2themax.com/TheBeerHouse/Default.aspx

The author's books page:
http://www.dotnet2themax.com/booksmarco.aspx

The author's blog:
http://www.dotnet2themax.com/blogs/mbellinaso/

The Technical Editor's website:
http://www.EricEngler.com

---

Here’s a link to the .NET v2.0 SIG website:
http://www.trinug.org/Default.aspx?tabid=205
You’ll find info about the syllabus, articles, labs, and books we’re using.

---

5/26/2006 3:29:20 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

Jeff Prosise stops by for a special visit

TRINUG usually meets on Wed nights, the big group gets together on the 2nd Wed, and the other weeks are for SIGs. Last night we held a special event with Jeff Prosise from Wintellect! He was in town consulting during the day and was able to speak with us after work. The conversation for the most part centered around AJAX in ASP.NET 2.0 and how Atlas fits in to hide javascript. His demos were straightforward and showed a few examples of how nice it was to have AJAX in your toolset.

The 2 big things I like are:

1. being able to update a screen without flashing and
2. lightweight communications using xml-http to retrieve only what you need
3. asynch timer polling - being able to poll a datasource and reflect any changes nearly immediately on a browser.

Jeff's (and other Winellectuals) code examples can be found at Wintellects blog.

4/4/2006 11:43:34 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG

Special Topics discussion - TRINUG

We had the first meet up for the TRINUG Special Topics discussion group tonight and i'm considering it a success! The key to this one will be favoring topics that appeal to advanced developers... and as someone put it, there's always beer and food - how bad could it be? I'm loving the flexible topic approach too, as we went around the room tonight to hear from folks what they want to cover /learn / get out of this monthly gathering, there was a huge range of topics! It's probably safe to divide them into 2 groups, the here and now, and the future cool stuff. What i found interesting is that most people were very interested in both. 

For the here and now there was a lot of interest in how to apply things like web services, enterprise libraries, data access, and n-tiered architectures - war stories and advice/guidance on things people have tried and mastered as well as how to approach learning and doing the unfamiliar.

The future topics generated a lot of talk about Atlas, Vista, Indigo, the Expression stuff. More interest in getting familiar with what's what and how to get started trying stuff out. a whole bunch of resources like the Vista website, channel 9 and virtual labs were suggested.

going forward we'll probably use a distribution list with RSS feed to keep in touch, and the future nextGen TRINUG, code name "dolly" website as a file, link repository. For some of the topics, it would be nice to send out some resources folks could optionally play with in the weeks before a meeting. this would allow folks to gain some familiarity and to be on the same page as others going into the meeting.

one final thought... folks really like the way this format is similar to what you usually can only find at big [expensive] developer conferences. it'd really be cool if we could start getting some big names to start attending some of these...

2/23/2006 10:10:13 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)      Comments [1]  TRINUG

Organizing new sort of event that will cater to advance .NET developers

I am trying to put together a new sort of event for the 4th week of the month that will cater to advance .NET developers, and therefore I need your input.
The format of this meet up will be unlike anything we’ve done in the past, but with the right energy and participation, I think this could be the coolest TRINUG thing going!

Basic premise: all developers know something worth sharing and in turn would like to learn from fellow developers. 

Here’s the plan:

First -> What I’d like to do is solicit a list of topics that may:
     -interest you, and impact how you develop apps.
     -you could talk on with some amount of expertise
     -you’ve been dying to learn more about
     -concepts, architectures, tools, libraries, etc. that you’ve nailed and could explain your approach to others.
     -design solutions you feel strongly about (and possibly debate the merits of with others)
     -how can we best go about learning, implementing new stuff ie. Vista, WinFX, Orcas, Windows Workflow Foundation

Next -> Get agreement on what interests the most folks
     -Compile these topics
     -Send them back out to you
     -(optional) solicit your level of interest, expertise

Finally -> if there’s adequate energy and interest level:
     -from the responses:
          o pick a favorite topic(s) for this month
          o pick an ad-hoc panel of highly interested and/or expert folks who could keep a conversation moving
     -Invite you to a gathering
          o this next Wednesday (Feb 22, 2006) starting around 6pm
          o probably at Rudino’s in the Park
          o beer availability – good
          o food flavor – good enough
          o location (on Miami Blvd right off i-40) – as good as any other
          o setup (room with tables off the back with doors that can be closed!) – doors are good

What’s up with this crazy format anyway?

The inspiration for this event formula has comes from a variety of drivers:
     -general sense that a very large number of advanced awesome developers exist in the RTP area and TRINUG isn’t catering to their interests
          o could be topic(s)
          o could be presenters
          o could be time/location
          o could be format
          o could be no one wants to hear me give another presentation from a book.
          o could be lack of beer
          o could be they want to participate more, but without needing to pull together a formal presentation
          o could be level not challenging enough
     -One way to learn is to hang out with knowledgeable folks
          o by osmosis
          o asking questions
          o beer relaxes the brain
          o challenging approaches
          o explaining your understanding to others
     -Flexible
          o rather than being time-boxed, we can change when it gets boring or stay all night if its’ cool
          o initial topic may change if someone in the group wants to take it in a different direction.
          o not everyone will have a beer so there will be a mix of sober, experts, novices, and advanced developers.
          o some people can not make a 5pm meeting because of travel time from work or the occasional unpredictable late night, so dropping in whenever is kosher here.
     -Rob Z
          o he wanted something like what one comes across at PDC, TechNet, VSLive!, etc conferences – spontaneous, inspirational, unpredictable
          o this is the closest I could come up with as a first pass.
     -Joe
          o he said he’d buy me a beer if I can pull this off… well not really, but he would have said it if I brought it up… well maybe if I begged and grovelled.
 

2/20/2006 4:44:22 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)      Comments [0]  TRINUG