Mark's Blog

Couldn't talk about this until today, but I am presenting WebMatrix3 at Visual Studio Live! next week in Las Vegas.  This is brand new (CTP made public today), and I get to present before even the product team can present on it.

I’ll be speaking at Visual Studio Live!, March 25-29 in Las Vegas, NV http://bit.ly/VLSPK29Reg.  Surrounded by your fellow IT professionals, Visual Studio Live! provides you with immediately usable IT education that will keep you relevant in the workforce.

I’ll be presenting the following sessions:

·         From 0 to website in 60 minutes with web matrix

·         Optimizing stored procedures

SPECIAL OFFER: As a speaker, I can extend $500 savings on the 5-day package. Register http://bit.ly/VLSPK29Reg

Learn how you can build a more productive IT environment at Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas — bring the IT issues that keep you up at night and prepare to leave this event with the answers, guidance and training you need.  Register now: http://bit.ly/VLSPK29Reg

Here are the links to the slide decks from the IT Pro Bootcamps I have been doing:

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/1hypervOverSMB.pdf

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/2hypervReplica.pdf

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/3hypervScale.pdf

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/4fileshares.pdf

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/5storage.pdf

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/6hypervShared.pdf

http://www.nhcomputerlearning.com/event/7azure.pdf

In this blog post I thought I would talk a little about one of my favorite features of VS2010, Intellitrace. Intellitrace is debugging on steroids. In regular debugging session you can see the values of variables at a certain time, but you can’t go backwards, and you cannot see the state of the entire system. This means that some bugs cannot be reproduced.

With Intellitrace a log file is created that allows you to debug the file. This is similar to a dump but has lots more information, and when run inside Visual Studio it allows you to recreate (or at least see) the bugs that occurred on the other computer. An example of this that you might read a value from an XML file when the application starts that is used much later, and only on a limited number of code paths. If this value is not read it may cause no problems most of the time. If after some work you narrow down that the problem is that the value is not there you would still have to then add a breakpoint where the read occurs and see why it was not read. If your computer has the file but the other computer does not, that can add even more complexity to the debugging process. With Intellitrace you can load the log file that was made on the QA machine and immediately go back to where the file was read and see what the problem is.

Intellitrace is available only in the Ultimate edition of Visual Studio 2010, but works on C# and VB .NET code written for .NET versions 2.0 and up. Intellitrace does not support debugging in XBOX, script and Silverlight applications. While Intellitrace does not support debugging applications running on another computer and attached, it does support opening a log file created in Visual Studio on another computer. Intellitrace can also be run from Test Manager as well as Visual Studio Ultimate 2010. Intellitrace also integrates with Team System allowing QA people to attach trace log files to work items that can then be assigned to other developers.

Intellitrace is always on be default but only collects minimal information, you can change the information Intellitrace collects by changing the settings in Visual Studio. The events that can be collected by Intellitrace include debugger events (events that occur while you are debugging your application including the STEP event and hitting breakpoints), exception events, and framework events (these can be initiating a method call, or file access).

As you can see Intellitrace is a great tool for speeding up the debugging process and if used correctly can even allow you to go backwards through your code. For more information, check out MSDN’s information at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264915.aspx

Spending a saturday with a bunch of developers at my last Windows Phone 7 event in San Diego with Woody Pewitt and Jim Bears.

I have been asked a number of times, when will there be a Windows Phone 7 developer event in San Diego, well, now we have one scheduled!!!  You can register here: 

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032465944&Culture=en-US

Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Diego and remember the Windows Phone 7 Developer events appear here first.

There is now a registration page for this Sunday's Windows Phone 7 event: http://bit.ly/aSa2LH, don't miss your chance to attend this event

I said to keep track of my blog for upcomming Windows Phone 7 events. 

SPECIAL NOTE:  There are still spaces available for an event at Quickstart's Offices this Sunday!!  Please contact: Casey Horton <casey at tryda dot com> for information and to reserve your spot....

We also have an event coming up in San Diego (more information soon)

Here is the current list:

I will have new entries here as new events are confirmed...

The .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2010 Road Trip sold out in under 3 hours.  If you read my blog, you got a one day head start over everyone else.  If you have not registered yet we are taking names for a wait list.

We are now taking registrations for the .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2010 Roadshow.  Here is the link:  http://www.eventbrite.com/event/641669250

.NET Rocks!! is going on the road again in honor of the release of VS2010, and here are the details:

Carl and Richard are loading up the DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV) and driving to your town again to show off the latest and greatest in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0! 

And to make the night even more fun, we’re going to bring a mystery rock star from the Visual Studio world to the event and interview them for a special .NET Rocks Road Trip show series.

Along the way we’ll be giving away some great prizes, showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs.

And one lucky person at the event will win “Ride Along with Carl and Richard” and get to board the RV and ride with the boys to the next town on the tour (don’t worry, we’ll get you home again!)

The details can be found here:

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/roadtrip.aspx