June 2005 - Posts
The junk will not stop and when I turn off comments and click save it still stays checked. I have resorted to put an non existent email in my profile -- so if comments do not work you know why. I hope my hack works.
Does anyone have a better solution to this?
Many people want a session on practical SOA. Anyone want to present this? ;-) . By the way we are looking at an option on lunchtime chalktalk sessions so some of these suggestions might end up there - or in the Q&A discussion rooms.
At the top of my head this is the sessions I am thinking about having at TechED Africa? Comments, moans - anything else. Remember I am limited to about 16 session in DEV and about 30 session in total that are dev related across all tracks.
ASP.NET Tips/Tricks
ASP.NET Working with Master Pages/Themes
WebParts development with ASP.NET vs
New in security in fx2
Threat modelling
VB.NET lang enhancements
C# Advanced
C++ Advanced
Intro to Indigo
Intro to Avalon
Enterprise Lib
Enterprise Lib 2
Working with VSTO 2005 including Outlook
Advanced ClickOnce
VSTS - Build DSL
VSTS - Customising VSTS
VSTS - Intro
WSE3
VB6 to VB.NET migration
Optimizing scalability, perf etc
Fabrikam/Generico Office
IBF?
ADO.NET with SQL
SQLCLR
XML in SQL
FX 1.1 to 2.0 migration
Check it out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/whidbey/introto2005/
As developers we can never just accept that something will not work. So when my wireless network was not working, there was no way I was going to accept that. For starters I maybe thought they forgot to put the card in :-).
As mentioned in my previous post the install for the Intel Wireless refused to work, even though I tried to run it in compatibility mode. Hunting through some of the files I noticed an msi file with a name of mDriver.msi. So this must be it. Tried to run the msi file directly - but it moaned - I was not allowed to run the msi file directly.
Next thing. What if I could extract the files from the msi file. Did some searching and on http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/archive/2003/11/25/56510.aspx they mention something called msicab that does the trick. Did another search on msicab hoping I could just find this file. No luck and I had no intention of hunting for and installing the Platform SDK.
Then a little brain wave. I looked at msiexec switches and they had an option for an admin install (I think /a). Ran the msi with this switch. It prompted me for a directory and voila - the files were extracted and the the .inf file was there. Right clicked the .inf file to install and 10 seconds later my wireless card was up. Intel also have a a little utility to tell you if things are installed nicely. I ran this and it pointed me to their website for the latest drivers. Downloaded this and it turns out that this download actually already had the extracted files :-). Anyway the feeling of getting it right is really cool.
So at the end of it, all my devices are working. Yey. The lession. Use msiexec with an admin install to extract files from an MSI (disclaimer - I have not done an indepth investigation on this so your mileage might vary)
I started to setup my new laptop. The same one Ruari blogged about (I spec'ed it after months of figuring out the best price/perf would be). It is a heavy beast though. Anyway the machines comes with Windows XP and I like to setup my demos locally (and not use VPCs for everything). This meant setting up Windows Server 2003 (since VSTS needs it). The most interesting thing about this is that all drivers all claim to only support and XP and 2000.
After installing WS03 I got a few hardware devices for which the drivers were not installed (they could not be found). Anyway after installing the various "drivers" from the resource CD most things work. I say drivers in quotes because in most case you are installing an app (with the full control panel add/remove bits) rather than just a driver. So I got audio working (after remembering to turn the service on!) as well as the network card and modem. The only problem is the Wireless card now. I tried to run setup in compatibility mode (this is really nice, try and make WS03 think it is 2000 or XP or even NT) and no luck.
The wierd part is that it is impossible to work in 1024*768. Now you might wonder why I want to do this. Simple -- most of my work involves talking to customers, doing talks so I try and mimic my environment as close as possible to my demo environment. Means I do not get too many surprises
Right now the OS is installed and so is Office and VS03. SQL05,VSTS etc soon
Good morning. A little more GOOD news from TechED.
- The latest SQL CTP is out. You can find the June CTP details here.This release is available to everyone (not just MSDN subscribers)
- More importantly, we made some changes to the SKU's. Reporting Services will be in all versions for SQL Server 2005 including Express, Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise Editions. In addition, Report Builder will be available with Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise Editions. This is really cool.
- TPC SQL benchmarks - In three TPC-H benchmarks, SQL Server 2005 had up to 162 percent higher performance than SQL Server 2000. See the TPC site for more information.
- RFID - we announced an initiative to offer an RFID technology server infrastructure
- I am not much of a Content Management Server guy but an announcement that SP2 of CMS will be out after the .NET Framework v2 ships. This release will hence support Framework v2. You can find a bit more here
As mentioned yesterday you can always expect announcements from TechED USA. A quick summary from Monday (of what I know about)
- VSTO now supports Outlook. Cool. Check the Office Site for more info. BTW VSTO in VS05 really rocks. We did not have time to demo this at Devdays but it is really really cool. You can program the Office 2003 Action Pane in a couple of lines of code
- WSE 3.0 CTP has been released. The Web Services site has more information and a download link.
Watch out for more (I hope) during the week.
I have been a long time Spurs fan (or should that be long suffering). This weekend the director of football who has only been in his position for around 12 months was suspended. The guy, Frank Arneson, was more or less given carte blanche to do as he pleases to overhaul the structure of not just the 1st team but of the club -- and it appeared that he was doing a very good job. Just about all Spurs fans trusted him. But then mega bucks Chelsea tapped him up and he wants to go. This after Chelsea being involved in a few other controversies surrounding tapping up players.
So much for loyalty in football these days.
This week is TechED USA and they tend to make a few announcements etc during the week. I have seen 1 sneak preview of an announcement so keep your eyes and ears peeled to the website for some of these.
There has been quite a bit of recent press on application compatibility when moving across to .NET Framework v2. A couple of important links/notes
1) Firstly I should iterate that Microsoft is fully committed to application compatibility. Check out Soma’s blog post at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2005/05/25/421822.aspx for more information
2) Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetdep/html/netfxcompat.asp for information on 1.1 and 2.0 compatibility.
3) See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnnetdep/html/BreakingChanges.chm for information on changes in v2 that could “break’ your apps.
4) Get us to test your applications especially if you are running on Win9x. Check http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/win9x/default.aspx for more information.
I am in partial TechED planning mode. I largely look after the developer track. I am keen on getting any feedback on what you like to see (or not see). You can do this in different ways
- ad hoc feedback. Just tell me what you are thinking
- look at http://www.msteched.com/content/sessions.aspx and see what sessions look good.
Things I am looking for
- level of sessions, how much intro, advanced etc
- breakdown of sessions on shipping (VS03) vs near shipping (VS05, SQL05) vs a year technology (Longhorn). How much do you want to see on Longhorn/Avalon/Indigo etc
- Architecture type sessions. These typically are powerpoint and/or discussion based? Do you guys like these?
A couple of important notes
1) Remember not all developers are the same. Take into account your preferences but also what other developers might want to see
2) TechED Africa is small relatively speaking. The US event has 400 sessions. We have around 70 usually. So they have about 10-15 sessions on web dev. We probably only get to fit in 2 or 3!