The Curtain Raiser

Community Distribution DVD Drops

2008-12-19T06:00:22Z

Ever heard of the MSDN Community Distribution DVDs? You don’t want to miss out on this quarter’s iteration of this awesome resource. We are distributing a festive double DVD with some PDC ’08 video content.

The DVD’s will be available from the following drop points:

Johannesburg – Reception Desk, Microsoft Bryanston (offices closed 22 Dec to 2 Jan) (http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/mscorp/bryanston.mspx)
Cape Town – Reception Desk, Microsoft Pinelands (offices closed 22 Dec to 2 Jan) (http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/mscorp/map_ct.mspx)
Cape Town – These DVD’s will also be available at the Scott Hanselman event on 17 Dec - http://dotnet.org.za/sadevelopercapetownevents/archive/2008/12/05/17-december-2008-building-a-real-website-with-asp-net-mvc-suffering-and-pain-and-joy.aspx
Durban – Willie Roberts, IT Intellect (http://www.itintellect.com/website_contact/47/)
Port Elizabeth – Dave Coates (http://pedotnet.blogspot.com)

We’ve also attached a competition to the DVD set. You’ll find all the details on SA Developer.

Dave Coates (a community lead from Port Elizabeht)was so kind to list the content of the DVD's, if you would like to review it, before picking up a copy.

10-4

2008-12-18T06:37:35Z

10-4 is a weekly video podcast which gives you a look at what's coming in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. Over and out!

It also has RSS feed capabilities so you'll be notified once the next video becomes available. You can even pick the format you're most comfortable with.

MSDN Community Distribution DVD

2008-12-17T15:26:41Z

The DVD’s will be available from the following drop points:

· Johannesburg – Reception Desk, Microsoft Bryanston (offices closed 25 Dec to 2 Jan)

· Johannesburg - Craig Nicholson

· Cape Town – Reception Desk, Microsoft Pinelands (offices closed 25 Dec to 2 Jan)

· Durban – Willie Roberts, IT Intellect

· Port Elizabeth – Dave Coates

We’ve also attached a competition to the DVD set. You’ll find all the details on SA Developer.

MIX09 - 8 to 20 March 2009

2008-12-17T10:41:24Z

The MIX Conference is a gathering of designers and developers who build cutting edge web sites. If you want to discuss the future of the Web, learn about the latest web technologies from Microsoft, or just rub shoulders with industry professionals, MIX (and Las Vegas) is the place to be. Register before 15 January 2009 and be an early bird.

Open XML, HTML, ODF and Java

2008-12-12T00:55:24Z

For those of you following Microsoft's Open XML standard that is used in Microsoft Office 2007, here are some new tools that make it possible to use Open XML in more environments.

Open XML Document Viewer, provides conversion capabilities from Open XML to HMTL. This project has a sample Firefox plug-in for doing exactly that.
Open XML/ODF Translators Version 2.5, an an add-in for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and XP, provides "translation" services between Open XML and ODF.
Apache POI Java SDK for Open XML for Java developers interested in working with Open XML documents.

You can also check the press release for more detail.

WOW!

2008-11-30T10:50:31Z

Miel Van Opstal has built a comprehensive list of Microsoft product team blogs and announcement channels. If there is a particular Microsoft technology, you'd want to be the first to know, these are the blogs you have to subscribe to. I'm confident you'll find at least a couple of blogs that you'll simply find irresistible.

2008-11-27T08:14:11Z

Microsoft recently released a cool new ASP.NET server control - <asp:chart /> - that can be used for free with ASP.NET 3.5 to enable rich browser-based charting scenarios.

<asp:chart /> supports a rich assortment of chart options - including pie, area, range, point, circular, accumulation, data distribution, ajax interactive, doughnut, and more. You can statically declare chart data within the control declaration, or alternatively use data-binding to populate it dynamically. At runtime the server control generates an image (for example a .PNG file) that is referenced from the client HTML of the page using a <img/> element output by the <asp:chart/> control. The server control supports the ability to cache the chart image, as well as save it on disk for persistent scenarios. It does not require any other server software to be installed, and will work with any standard ASP.NET page.

Full details on Scott Guthrie's blog.

Community Events - Gauteng

2008-11-20T02:02:42Z

You may have thought the best of the year to be over. If you look at the following community events, then you'll realize that that's not the case.

DTS 2000 migration to SSIS...makes financial sense !! - Steve Simon, State Street Corporation, New York
You vote on the topic - Scott Hanselman (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/), Microsoft Corp. If you don't live in Jo'burg, you may want to fly up for this one. Definitely, not to be missed!

What are you waiting for? RSPV today!

DevDays 2009: Topics

2008-11-19T12:45:51Z

As stated in a previous blog, we're in the planning phase for DevDays 2009 (South Africa), and the excitement is definitely building on our side!

In the current phase we want to finalise the session topics. We're considering doing 4 parallel tracks, with 5 sessions per track. One track is already reserved for a combination of interoperability topics like PHP on Windows, and SQL Server 2008 Development. That leaves us with 15 topics.

I would greatly appreciate your input in the process. We're looking for sessions that will appeal to the broadest set of Microsoft developers in South Africa. We unfortunately do not have enough sessions to cater for specialist or complex topics. Hence, here is our proposed list.

ASP.NET: Dynamic Data, MVC, AJAX improvements and ASP.NET Routing
Internet Explorer 8: Developer Features
Vista: Building Vista gadgets
Mobile: Building a mobile business application
WPF: New features and improvements in SP1
XNA: Building games with XNA Studio
Silverlight: New and enhanced features in Silverlight 2
Silverlight: Silverlight 3 and mobile support
LINQ: Learning the syntax
ADO.NET Entity Framework and Data Services
Windows Azure: Understanding the vision
Azure Services Platform: Building applications on the platform
Current Team Foundation Server and Team System
Future Team Foundation Server and Team System
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0: New features

Have I missed an essential developer topic? Which topic will you then rather drop in favour of your topic?

Deadline: I need all responses by Tuesday, 25 November.

Technical Readiness for FREE

2008-11-18T11:17:20Z

SA Architect and the guys from BB&D are doing FREE readiness sessions for whoever is a member of SA Architect, of which membership is free :-) Check out their events calendar - look at all the sessions prefixed with "TR". It's straight one-hour sessions and may just give you that quick edge on a new or existing technology. The recordings for some of these sessions are also available for download.

Quick Survey

2008-11-17T08:19:04Z

“PLEASE” support the SA Architect community and complete the survey at http://www.saarchitect.net/Lists/Technology%20Awareness%20%20Readiness/overview.aspx ... will take you 2-3 minutes.

Your VOTE/FEEDBACK will be highly appreciated!

Devs4Devs Code Sample

2008-11-10T03:15:25Z

For those of you that attended the Devs4Devs event in Cape Town, here are some code samples Hans Appelo used in his "Aggregating and Pivoting data" session -

http://cid-ac65922fa2478490.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public. Enjoy.

Calling all Port Elizabeth-onians!

2008-11-09T14:52:22Z

The gathering of the developer force has been declared!

It will happen on 27 November 2008 at NMMU South Campus, Embizweni Building. Please be there at 3pm for 3:30pm, and it will end approx. 6:30pm.

Presentations will be from local Microsoft Gold Certified Partner emediaIT (http://www.emediait.com) and topics will be:

· ASP.NET MVC : What’s the big deal?!

· Telerik Sitefinity: How to use one of the best .NET CMS systems to create a custom designed website in under an hour.

· LLBLGen Pro: Rapid .NET application development using LLBLGen Pro

RSVP to Dave Coates (dcoates@qzcreative.co.za)

DevDays 2009!

2008-11-09T02:48:51Z

Good news. The planning for DevDays 2009 has kicked off. We're planning for more sessions, more tracks and more presenters than ever! It's most likely going to happen between February and March 2009.

One question. We have so much that we wish to share with Microsoft developers, that we may run out of sessions. Hence, let me test an idea with you. If we reduce the time allocated per session to 45 minutes, then we can fit in an extra session per track.

How would you feel about such a change? More sessions, but less time per session.

PDC2008/3

2008-10-29T22:17:10Z

Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research highlighted in the keynote some of the key projects they're busy with.

SensorMap is an innovation that helps to collect data through the strategic positioning of sensors. It is currently for instance being used in the Swiss Alps to obtain better visualization of the effect of global warming.
WorldWide Telescope brings together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe. The next version, Equinox Beta, has been released and allows for a 3D exploration of the universe. A demo was shown during the keynote - truly amazing, mesmerizing!
Boku is a visual programming tool for children. I think adults will equally enjoy this:-) You "write code" using an XBox game controller.
SecondLight, the technology following Microsoft Surface, allows one to work with objects hovering above the Surface. It opens up exciting possibilities.

C# 4.0

The session was presented by Anders Hejlsberg, and as always, it was such a pleasure to listen to him.

The key focus areas of the different C# language versions, make it easier to appreciate C# 4.0.

C# v.1 - Managed code
C# v.2 - Generics
C# v.3 - LINQ
C# v.4 - Dynamic Programming (and I can already see the Python and Ruby developers smile :-))

Hence, the key enhancements in C#4 are:

Dynamically typed objects - IronRuby, IronPython, but also dynamic support in C# and VB.NET
Optional and named parameters, which, for long, was the prerogative of Visual Basic developer
Improved COM interoperability will be great news for managed developers interoping with the Microsoft Office API's

Check out the CSharp page, as well as the C# Futures page for discussions, and samples.

Anders also showed a future feature that may become available in some future release of C#, not necessarily C# 4, called "Compiler as Service". This will allow a developer to interact with the compiler directly from code, for instance sending dynamically constructed pieces of code to the compiler, to be compiled and executed. An implementation example of this feature is an interactive development environment.

That was day 3!