6. Tech Ed 2005

Tech Ed - Day 4 Thursday

Bill Jones Jr. — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 04:44:00 GMT

Here's more stats -- from the CommNet home page for the show:

What does it take to feed 13,000 people at Tech·Ed?

117,000 bottles of water
14,300 lattes
15,600 ice cream bars (it’s HOT out there)
4,000 pounds of chips and snack mix
2,300 dozen eggs
8,000 pounds of chicken
52,000 servings of juice

Who knew they were counting the bottles of water?

After a session on the top ten ISV enhancements to SharePoint, Kevin Laahs of HP gave a presentation in Searching in SharePoint. That's an issue because searching in a Windows SharePoint Services Team Site can yield different results than searching in a SharePoint Portal installation. Who knows why -- product differentiation maybe?

After a thorough introduction into SharePoint indexing and search behavior, Kevin showed a neat trick where minor tweaks to the Search.aspx file yields increased capabilities like a wild card search and the ability to open documents from the search list in a separate window. Trust me, most of this presentation was really down in the weeds. If you have a search problem with a huge SharePoint site, Kevin should be your first call.

The day ended with another ASP 2.0 presentation. In this one, Stefan Schackow of Microsoft introduced the advances being made in the ASP Converter -- the tool that converts a v1.1 app to v2.0. First, the really good news ... not only does v1.1 co-exist with v2.0 on the same server, but you can run v1.1 binaries on the v2.0 framework. Looks like Microsoft is really taking this compatibility thing seriously. Go into the web site properties to set the application pool and the framework version. When you are running side by side on different frameworks versions, you have to be in different application pools.

If you want to share form authentication tickets across v1.1 and v2.0 applications, you need to set the validation and encryption keys in the web.configs to the same values. You also need to drop the machineKey in the v2.0 web.config to "3DES", since ASP2 defualts to higher encryption.

ASP2 generates a bunch of "/APP_*" folders so the if a browser makes a request against one of those directories it can be rebuffed, just as requests against the "/bin" folder are now. There's more to cover here, but we will have to back to this topic later. This day is done -- or maybe it's me that's done.

As LNBruno puts it … from "Your man at TechEd!"

Bill J

Orlando

Tech Ed - Day 3 - Wednesday

Bill Jones Jr. — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 16:40:00 GMT

Since it was our very own Ken Spencer doing a presentation on Secure Apps, it didn't matter that it started at 0'dark thirty -- I had to be there. And I'm glad I went, even though I ended up traversing the main hall at least twice to get breakfast and get back to Ken's venue. Main hall treks are only noteworthy because the main hall is about 10 miles long. By the way, somebody warn Bill Plummer that the food was not worth the walk. Without grits how can you warm up your cold eggs?

But back to Ken and company. Yeah, I know Spence really fills a stage, but Ricky Samona from Microsoft managed to keep up, even though I was on only my second cuppa joe when he shoved C++ in my face. Oh well, what doesn't kill ya…

The official title of the Spence and Rick show is Security Enhancements in Visual Studio 2005 and there are a lot of them. Ken kicked off with an excellent analogy - what he calls the onion security model. Implement security in layers, easy to peel through at first, then more difficult and then downright unpleasant as you penetrate the layers. VS05 definitely improves our tool set but here are some stats to get your attention:

Gartner says 75% of all hacks happen at the app layer

Microsoft says 64% of developers are not confident of they can write secure code

Bill Jones says a lot of those other 36% may not "know their own limitations" -- except for the "sherruf" of course. By the way, somebody tell Eric I got the slide deck for him.

Ken showed some VSTS (Team System) enhancements that let us set shop polices like "require clean build" before check-in. Since FxCop is baked in now, we can even require a clean source analysis before check-in. I assume we can "shelve" a project in the source lib if those checks fail, and it's Friday late, and sweetie is standing behind us tapping her foot wondering if we really understand the definition of "NOW!". While I am still impressed with the Team System extensions, until we get the pricing issues cleared I'm not sure how hard to push for it.

The VS Permissions Calculator is way cool. It analyzes your project and tells you what you need to access to run successfully. I'm unclear exactly how it works, but we can login with lower permissions and test/debug our apps. Again, due to the early hour or Ricky's speed, he showed the debugger flagging a permission error and the dialog gave alternatives on how to fix it. He clicked an option and resolved the bug. I think it bumped the security permissions up on the fly to let the app continue.

Spence showed a few of the goodies in the VB.Net My classes. He indicated that legacy coders like the C# guys can get access by inheriting a VB class that wraps these capabilities. Wonder if you can just import the VB classes directly from the framework?

Spence showed off that nifty Web Site Administrator wizard. I think it's baked into VS05. He also said something about a Wizard "wizard" that lets you create your own wizards. Man do I need that!

Data protection API, more Role management, configuration class can now encrypt, auto test gen, and on, and on, and on. This is a major upgrade guys. I'm hearing the Catherman quote again and again - "When you move up to the beta you will not want to go back."

Spence summed up the entire topic with "Security is about tools, but it is mostly about people and process." Amen, brother.

Creating Dynamic Web Sites with ASP Net 2.0 Web Parts - Andres Sanabria MS - WOW! This was the most exciting presentation I have seen since I watched the first demo of an interactive debugger. Oops, there I go dating myself again. I am truly speechless on this one. I've got the slides. I will get the code and I will blog more about this when I get home. If you are a Guild member, you have my personal promise that you will see this demo "real soon now". If you are a Carolina Group leader, come see our web parts demo when we do it because you will definitely want it for your group.

Let me sum it all up by saying that web parts 2.0 will change how we do web sites. We can now casually allow our clients to arrange pages to suite themselves. User Controls and server controls can easily be coded to be consumed as web parts or not. Visual Design is now real for all our web development. Connections between web parts is pointy-clicky and can be dynamic or static. But what about SharePoint? Late next year, the new SharePoint version will be completely compatible. Off the record, a way to retrofit web parts 2.0 is in the works and recognized by all the right people as being a drop-dead requirement. If you're not doing SharePoint now, get ready because it is coming to a server near you.

And then there was Scott Guthrie. I missed ASP.Net Part 1, but Part 2 did some more boggling. Scott put up two slides because every presentation needs slides. Then he dropped into the IDE and I started getting seat belt burns from the G forces as we kept rounding corners and seeing new, really neat stuff. Skins & Themes, Master pages, Site map (coming to the next release of SharePoint), auto navigation menu, bread crumb control, membership, role management (with and without AD), web site admin tool, WYSIWYG user controls, web parts, and internationalization made easy… again WOW!

Scott expects over 10,000 sites to go live that have been developed in beta. The UK National Health site has been live serving millions or users without a hiccup for months. Go to www.scottgu.com for the slides(?) and the demo code.

We've been hearing a lot about Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) so I dropped in on the Ken Getz presentation. Ken presents as well as he writes, but in this case, I became convinced I could figure out most of what he was showing us in a couple of hours if I needed it. Don't misunderstand me, the room was packed and the presentation was showing how well VSTO works with Word, Excel and Outlook -- not Power Point or Access. But it wasn't ASP.Net 2.0 and it wasn't SharePoint and it wasn't workflow, so it missed my sweet spot and I left early.

Back to the big hall… wonder how many miles I'll need to walk today? Anybody on the speaker circuit for these things doesn't need an exercise program.

Bill J

Orlando

Tech Ed - Day 2 - Tuesday

Bill Jones Jr. — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 03:24:00 GMT

Nothing much in the opening keynote session, just a release date for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006 -- November 7. The details are available at the launch site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/launch2005/

After a visit to the INetA booth, I caught the last part of Billy Hollis (www.dotnetMasters.com) presentation on Click Once WinForm deployment. Between MSI, Click Once and the Application Updater Block, we should be able to deploy anything across the web these days. We're working on getting a schedule date for Billy to present to the Enterprise Developers Guild. Stay tuned.

My next session was a SharePoint lab given by BrightWorks, a Microsoft partner. BrightWorks has an excellent support product for SharePoint product, but they are proud of it.

My next session was a SharePoint Workflow Lab with one a MetaLogix partner, Captaris (www.Captaris.com). We have an excellent workflow product in Captaris Teamplate and it really works well with SharePoint. Matt Williams led us through an excellent hands on demo of the latest release. The workflow is implemented using an interesting approach to SharePoint programming. One web part is used to drop Captaris on SharePoint page. Then all the workflow screens work in a "dialog" mode, popping up small windows over the web part. The wizard works pretty much the same way. I will definitely keep that in mind for future SharePoint development. Can you say "interactive development"? For that matter can you say "finesse"? Captaris sure can.

After a twenty minute stop at the CodeZone launch party for "dinner", I went to an outstanding SharePoint Site Definition and Templates session given by Mike Fiztmaurice of Microsoft and consultant Ted Pattison (www.TedPattison.net). Again, the best approach to cloning a SharePoint site involves lots of finesse. Mike and Ted did an excellent job showing the pressure points where SharePoint can be prodded and pushed into using cascading style sheets and the navigation bar can be controlled programmatically, or interactively. I really like Ted's sample site, Wing Tip Toys, he has posted on his site. I hope I can find the presentation slides as they were a treasure trove of SharePoint modification tips and tricks. If you are at all interested in SharePoint development check out GotDotNet. The workspace /SharePointDevKickStart does what it says. The new SharePad, note pad for SharePoint, is another GotDotNet workspace you should check out.

A late night cabana session on Best Practice for SharePoint Development got of to a bad start when the scheduled expert didn't show. However, Amanda, the INETA moderator pulled it out. We may not have discussed best practice, but she got a lively exchange of experiences, questions and answers going among the SharePoint "Birds Of a Feather" in attendance.

It was a long day, but these break out and cabana sessions are keepers.

Bill J

Orlando

Day 0 - INETA Summit at Tech Ed

Bill Jones Jr. — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:50:00 GMT

OK. This is out of sequence. I know that. I'm just getting this stuff up here as fast as I can. This post is for user group members everywhere, but is primarily written for the members and leaders of the Enterprise Developers Guild. We've got a group to be proud of guys, but I'm sure we'll make it even better.

Sunday at Tech Ed was INetA Summit day. We've come a long way in the last year. We meet with the Culminis folks - the "INETA" for IT Pros. We have a lot in common, but we have some significant differences as well.

INETA NORAM (NORth AMerica) has new officers. Here is our current organization:

INETA NORAM - Board of Directors

Chris Pels - President

Sara Faatz - VP

Jason Beres - Secretary

Treasurer - Dave Noderner (July 1 to June 30 fiscal)

Division VPs

Morgan Baker - VP Community Activities

Chris Wallace - VP Membership [UG relations]

Brian Tinkler - VP Marketing

Bill Wolff - VP Speakers Bureau

Devin Rader - VP Technology

Non-voting Board Members

Bill Evjen

Amy Sorokas - MS

Samantha Spears- Exec Director (info@ineta.org)

Here are the Worldwide leaders:

Latin American (LatAm) - Jose Berrios

Middle East/Africa (MEA) - Goksin Bakir

Europe - Damir Tomicic

North America (NORAM) - Chris Pels

(missing one more region)

Some interesting stats: INETA is 3.5 years old, has 800 User Groups affiliated worldwide representing over 370,000 members

Here are some random observations -- things I learned at INETA camp (unless otherwise noted, applies to us and not necessarily IT Pros):

Organization: Most groups are very informal and are not incorporated. Most do not charge dues, but if you charge dues, your reasons to incorporate increase. Those groups that are incorporated and have regular elections seem to have a problem with transition or with people getting elected and not fulfilling responsibilities for one reason or another. If you incorporate, you have to have bylaws. If you have bylaws you almost have to have some form of elections. If you have elections you are almost certainly only two cycles away from a problem. Look at our model. We have about a dozen highly involved worker bees. We have another twenty members or so who come to meetings very regularly. We have maybe a hundred or so who come to one or two meetings and most big events every year. If we have elections, I would not expect any significant increase in meeting turn out unless someone was trying to hijack the group. Unless we can figure out a way to limit voting members to active members, I'm not sure how to get effective elections. Guess that means I'm "el Presidente for life" until we can come up with another plan that insures the continued success of the Enterprise Developers Guild. By the way, we can have bylaws without incorporating, so we could take this one step at a time.

Finances: An Alabama leader pointed out that you can have a bank account without incorporating. You should be able to avoid IRS problems as long as you have multiple signatories on the account, although you might have to shop banks or officers within a bank to get someone who has been around long enough to do what you ask. Seems the Patriot Act can get in the way -- depending on who's looking at you. Calling yourself a "community club" might help get you into the right pigeon hole. Beware that having a bank account might open you up to some kind of liability if you get a staving lawyer and a stupid judge involved. Our technique of avoiding all this looks better and better.

Web Presence: Check out www.INETA.org. It is definitely improving. The vast majority of the .NET groups use Dot Net Nuke. I actually got to pick on Shaun Walker and his stalwart crew. But never fear, I made sure he understood how much we appreciate his -- and the group's -- development efforts. Devin Rader, our new Technology VP, is talking up an ESS format. That would be an RSS feed for events so INETA could consume and publish our events and we could do the same for INETA and surrounding groups. We got the word to Shaun as to what our top three issues are - Event Management, Membership Management (where DNN already does a great job), and Sponsor Support (we actually wrote down "marketing", but sponsor support is what I heard). The second most commonly used portal was the Community Starter Kit. Those guys made the excellent point that they had no rev issues as there has been only one release. Something to be said for that.

One final thought... Ron over at Culminis made an excellent point -- unfortunately it was mostly to me and not to the goup -- consensus seems to indicate that the IT Pro groups can increase participation with community outreach events but that the learning curve is so intense for the >NET groups that we have to stay focused on the technology. However, the Charlotte IT Group does something we can ALL emulate. They give out extra raffle tickets if you bring in food or clothing donations. That resulted in literally tons of donations last year. We can ALL adopt that one.

Bill J

Orlando

Tech Ed - Day 1 -Monday

Bill Jones Jr. — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 03:58:00 GMT

Keynote- Mr. Ballmer gets way more out of a slide than I do. Primary theme is connectivity, as it has been since Windows 95. The document handler in Longhorn looks awesome. After using a nifty search capability to reduce the number of target docs, they zoom in and all the docs began to wysiwyg render - graphics and all. As I said, awesome. To stress security, they showed us several times that a corporation can wipe a lost PDA or even set it to wipe itself after a defined number of login failures. Never said anything about how to restore it when the boss finally remembers his password. We also saw "Virtual Earth" where map view and aerial photos can be merged in the same display.

Some interesting stats

Developer tool penetration:

.NET 43%

Java 35%

Win 32 but not .NET was #3 but I didn't get the percentage.

Global framework penetration:

Some .NET 90%

No .NET 10%

Implementation of the WS Test 1.1 defined by Sun Microsystems

.NET 2.0 25-45% faster than .NET 1.1

.NET 2.0 200% faster than IBM Web Sphere

Mr. Ballmer and friends did a nifty job of showing us ".NET in Office". Using the Office tools in VS 2005, they showed us a dashboard app hosted in Outlook with all sorts of drill down and custom screens. Really looks interesting. Does raise a ton of dependencies when you start down that path though.

Team Services- If you got the VSTS (Visual Studio Team Suite) pricing announcement as part of your Universal a couple of weeks ago you are probably as confused as I was when Will Read brought it to my attention. Evidently somebody heard our squeals of "WHAT?" because we actually had a cabana session "Adopting Visual Studio 2005 Team System On a Budget". Here's the short version. If you have a active Universal (retail about $2700) when VSTS ships, you can pick a role (Architect, Developer or Tester) and get that package as part of your Universal, no extra charge and including the Team Foundation Server (TFS) for 5. If you want all roles, you can get it for $1000 under this scenario. If you want to implement a team, you have to buy seat licenses for the various roles.

MSFT is clearly looking at Rational customers with this one. In that arena if you don't charge enough, "it must not be enterprise ready". That quote comes from a Rational customer, not MSFT. Retail for the full VSTS is like $10K, but who buys retail? If you are a partner, there's probably a deal. If you are under a volume license, there is probably a deal. Pricing is complicated but two things are clear. They are really hung up on this role stuff and Visual Studio pricing is going to change. Here's what we know about pricing now: Express $49 (per language, I think); Standard $299/$199 upgrade; Professional $799/599 upgrade; Team Systems - who knows? For real info check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy or call your rep. For Team System http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem.

There should be a 180 day eval. If we manage that carefully, we could get a small project done and see how the product stacks up. We'll certainly need the eval if the pricing stays were it is now.

The VSS guy was close by and told us the SourceSafe Admin tools get a big bump in capability and that web access "is in there" as we expected. I'm glad we still have VSS because I'm really beginning to wonder how much time I should spend on Team Systems.

eLearning- This is looking very good. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/default.asp it is definitely worth the trip. Sondra and her crowd have a serious push on to help us spin up in Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. No only are excellent courses being offered for online and local viewing, but hands on web Virtual labs should get us way down the path very quickly. Stay tuned, Sondra's also trying to get the User Groups a deal. By the way, what are "solutions" in SQL Server 2005?

Jeff Prosise- His membership, roles and profiles ASP.NET 2.0 presentation just keeps getting better. By the way, don't forget to run aspnet_regsql.exe to et the automagic databases and tables initialized for ASP.NET 2.0. Jeff causally showed us a nifty web site admin tool available in VS 2005. We're trying to work out a date for Jeff to visit the Guild.

Billy Hollis and Rockford Lhotka- If you think these two are good on their own, you ought to see them on the same platform. They did an architectural session on Smart Clients. Good stuff and confirmed some suspicions I've had for a long time. WinForms can be a silver bullet when you need client capability in a disconnected application.

Bill J

Orlando

Tech Ed 2005 - June 5-10 - Orlando, FL

Bill Jones Jr. — Sun, 01 May 2005 22:26:00 GMT

Are you going to Tech Ed? If so, look for me there. I'll be the incredibly good looking grandfather trying to hit all the SharePoint sessions. If not, stay tuned. More to come.