John Alexander's Blog

Kansas City .NEt UG November Meeting Announcement

John Alexander — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:47:57 GMT

This month's meeting will be a social/networking/bar camp type meeting. It will be a good chance to just talk and socialize over beers/wines/ cokes.

For those who are interested, we will be meeting at Coach's Bar around the corner from Centriq.

Click for directions and map: 414 W 103rd St, Kansas City, MO 64114

See you there!!!

Surface development resources and sdk now publicly available!

John Alexander — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:38:30 GMT

If you’ve ever wanted to play around with a Microsoft Surface app but didn’t have the resources to get your own table. This is for you! Until recently, even the SDK was very hard to obtain without access to the device. Microsoft has expanded access and created several new resources for you to try. check it out!

Surface Web site (http://www.surface.com)
- A new Technical Resources section to help you connect to the other available resources and support.
MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com)
- A new Microsoft Surface section of the MSDN Library (under .NET Development), providing the Surface SDK documentation and other topics about developing Surface applications.
- New Surface-specific forums about designing and developing Surface applications.
TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com)
- A new Microsoft Surface section of the TechNet Library (under Products and Technologies), describing the basics of the Surface software and hardware and how to set up, customize, troubleshoot, and maintain Surface units.
- New Surface-specific forums about the Surface software platform, hardware, and applications.
Microsoft Download center (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads)
- A new product category for all Surface downloads, including the Surface SDK Workstation Edition, applications, documentation, and any software fixes.
Microsoft Support (http://support.microsoft.com)
- Public Surface KB articles for fixes, known issues, and workarounds.
- Surface Solution Center to direct customers to the right self-support and assisted-support options.

Despondent because you Didn’t attend PDC? Take heart and check this out!

John Alexander — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:17:55 GMT

If you were like me last week – bummed because you weren’t able to make one of the coolest
PDC’s in years. You’ll be happy to know (as I was) about a very generous and cool offering from Microsoft – made possible by some very hard work from the channel 9 guys!

You can view ALL the sessions here! All of Day 1 is up (including PPTs) and Day 2 and 3 content will follow shortly with the plan being everything up by mid week!

Great job guys!!!!!!!!! And thanks!!!!!

downloadable book released: SharePoint guidance for SQL Server database administrators

John Alexander — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:49:34 GMT

I stumbled across a recently released collection of guidance and best practices for SharePoint DBAs and those who love them.

From the download page…

“ This book is a guide for database administrators who implement or maintain Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It provides guidelines for improving the performance of Office SharePoint Server 2007 solutions that run on Microsoft SQL Server 2008…”

Get it here in either doc or pdf formats.

The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training resources

John Alexander — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:12:32 GMT

I’m sure by now you know that the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta has been released. If not, get it here.

There are also some great training resources already available!

The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of framework technologies including:

C# 4.0
Visual Basic 10
F#
Parallel Extensions
Windows Communication Foundation
Windows Workflow
Windows Presentation Foundation
ASP.NET 4
Windows 7
Entity Framework
ADO.NET Data Services
Managed Extensibility Framework
Visual Studio Team System

This version of the Training Kit works with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2.

And videos too!!!! With Love from Channel 9!

The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Course includes videos and hands-on-labs designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of framework technologies including: C# 4.0, Visual Basic 10, F#, Parallel Computing Platform, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data.

Enjoy!!!!

Resources for “Dancing With Sharepoint” presentation at Heartland developers conference 2009

John Alexander — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:54:49 GMT

Hello,

Here are the companion resources for the “Dancing with SharePoint” presentation at the Heartland Developers Conference 2009. We talked about best practices to create a SharePoint virtual development environment, ways to get the most functionality out of the box, and some great development tools. Thanks to all who came!!!!

“Power User Books” – For getting the most out of the box

The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users

Essential SharePoint 2007: A Practical Guide for Users, Administrators and Developers

Virtual PC Resources and Best Practices

Virtual PC Tips by Scott Hanselman

How to Create a MOSS 2007 VPC Image – This is a great series of articles on setting up a virtual environment, especially part 20 which is about creating differencing disks.

Here is another great article on differencing disks by Andrew Connell.

SharePoint Development Tools

Here is a list of the Tools demonstrated during the presentation:

STSDev

WSPBuilder

U2U CAML Query Builder

For the person who asked - “How to Use CAML (with examples)”

Search Query Web Service Test Tool for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007

SharePoint 2007 SDK – includes BDC Editor

Simego MOSS BDC Design Studio

Lightning Tools BDC Meta Man

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions, Version 1.1

A 30 day Virtual PC environment for SharePoint:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD

SharePoint Training Resources

John Alexander — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:35:03 GMT

I’ve needed to pull together some resources for SharePoint training:

Figured I’d post them.

Virtual Labs:

Get first-hand deployment experience through the Virtual Lab series. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 will teach you about installation, organizing content, managing user permissions, creating Web Parts for custom tasks, and much more.It's simple: no complex setup or installation is required to try out SharePoint Products and Technologies running in the full-featured TechNet Virtual Lab. You get a downloadable manual and a 90-minute block of time for each module. You can sign up for additional 90-minute blocks any time.

Developer Labs

IT Pro Labs

End User Training

“Explore Office SharePoint Server 2007 with training from Microsoft experts, right from your desktop. Download a simple file to get the grand tour of the latest features and changes, including automated workflows to track approval cycles, business dashboards showing how well you are performing on your goals, and syncing documents to Outlook. The training, which includes articles, videos, and interactive tutorials, will lead you step-by-step through the rich features of Office SharePoint Server.

We offer two training editions. If you just want to view the training on your desktop, then download our Standalone Edition. After you install the training, you’ll see an icon on your desktop that will make it easy to find the training when you need it.

For our Portal Edition, you’ll need to enlist the help of your friendly IT team. They can install it on your company’s Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. Then they can even track who has used the training, and what trainings they’ve taken. “ - excerpted from the site…

Download here:

Dynamics Gp development resources

John Alexander — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:01:48 GMT

Recently I’ve been engaged to integrate Dynamics GP Manufacturing and SharePoint. It’s been a daunting task to say the least to navigate the database.

Here is a good link to assist with learning more about the data structure in GP.

a developer survey - PC for dev environment

John Alexander — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:16:33 GMT

My good friend and fellow Microsoft Regional Director Adam Cogan asked me the following question today. I was curious what you thought so I decided to ask you as well:

What are you going to be using going forward (and why)?

1. WINDOWS 2008 R2 Release Candidate

2. WINDOWS 7 Release Candidate

3. VISTA ?

4. OTHER

Respond in the comments if you would. I'm really curious! Thanks!

WCF / WF 4 Training Kit released - proves life is better than it was 15 minutes ago

John Alexander — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:06:46 GMT

The hits keep coming! First they announced Beta 1, now here's a link to the piping hot WCF/WF4 Training Kit from Ron Jacobs!

"The WCF/WF 4 training kit contains a set 6 hands on labs that will help you quickly get up to speed with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in .NET 4. The labs include Introduction to Workflow, Workflow Services, Flowchart, Workflow Designer, Service Discovery and Monitoring. "

Ps. Here's the video version from endpoint.tv

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 Beta 1 ships!

John Alexander — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:04:40 GMT

Soma posted about the BETA 1 RELEASE of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4!!!! He waxes eloquently here about it! This is a major release and you should be evaluating it to determine how best to apply it.

Here are some resources to speed you on your way:

Articles here at the MSDN .NET Framework Developer Center

Forums here

Microsoft .NET Framework: Overview and Applications for Babies - Scott Hanselman

Enjoy! I know I will!

This is great! A Magnum tribute with Microsoft Style!

John Alexander — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:03:09 GMT

The Microsoft Web Platform guys have released a video on youtube that pays homage to one of my favorite detective shows. Check it out here! This is just a teaser and I can't wait for Episode 1!

Who knew that installing apps could be this exciting! Go Cannon PI!!!! Soma and ScottGu rock!

Upcoming SOA Design Patterns Webcast -- Check it out!

John Alexander — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:15:52 GMT

I saw this yesterday and think it looks like its going to be very worthwhile! I'll see ya there!

Safari Books Online invites you to attend an exclusive webcast with Thomas Erl during which he will discuss some of the most important SOA design patterns in use today.
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear Thomas Erl, author of the newly published SOA Design Patterns, a catalog of 85 design patterns for service-oriented architecture and service-orientation. In development for over three years, the catalog has been subjected to comprehensive reviews by hundreds of industry professionals and is in use by many of the world’s leading technology companies.

The webcast will be on Thursday, March 26 at 10:30am Pacific/1:30pm Eastern.

Click here to register!

Live Search 2.0 Announces Contest And Becomes Latest Ingredient in GeeksWithBlogs.net Secret Sauce!!!

John Alexander — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:10:27 GMT

Thursday during the keynote at PubCon in Las Vegas Microsoft announced “Project Silk Road” which is a collection of services, including a new version of the Live Search APIs for developer community – basically Search API 2.0 Beta + Search Ads pilot.

I can tell you all from firsthand experience that this is very slick! As one of the first implementations of the Live Search API 2.0 Beta , we got it up and running on GeeksWithBlogs.net very quickly and couldn’t be happier with the results. Search API handled the huge volume of archives and indexed them very quickly. Kudos to Ani Babaian and the Live Search team for a job well done.

Ani and the team want you to try your hand with this great new API so they are sponsoring a contest!

Create COOL implementations of Search API 2.0 Beta + Ads

--- SDK can be found here ---

From Ani -----

We are looking for some really cool implementations from the developer community which will be displayed on our website! We’re looking for as many implementations as possible! Come on team, put your developer skills to use and share your passion about Microsoft technology!

Win a Prize:

All submissions entered by (12am) midnight PST US on Dec 5^th 2008 will be eligible for our prize drawing of a $120 gift certificate to the Microsoft Company store.

Please note: All submissions must be on live websites (so we have to be able to navigate to the website or be able to download the application to see it) and must follow our Terms of Use – present on Search API and Ads web sites respectively. Drawing will take place on Dec 8^th 2008 and the winner will be notified via email by Dec 9^th 2008.

Send all links/information about implementations to: AniBATMicrosoft.com (Replace AT with @).

Learn more about: Search API 2.0 (Beta) + Ads pilot

The Live Search API 2.0 Beta enables you to embed as a custom component a flexible and powerful search engine on your sites and applications. With the addition of XML (POX) and JSON formats, as well as the previously supported SOAP API, the Live Search API 2.0 Beta allows you to integrate the power of search using the code and formatting you choose. In addition, some source formats types are also accessible through an OpenSearch-compliant RSS interface.

Step 1: Get an App ID

Go to http://search.live.com/developers to create your AppID which you will use to gain access to all the great search results from Search API 2.0.

Step 2: Select your URI type

When you want to query the HTTP endpoint you first start with an HTTP GET request to the appropriate URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). There are two URIs, one for XML results and one for JSON results: http://api.search.live.net/xml.aspx and http://api.search.live.net/json.aspx respectively.

Both URIs expect at least three required query string parameters: AppID, query, and sources. The AppID query string parameter is a value you get when you sign up as a developer with the Developer Center program (http://search.live.com/developers). The query value will be the query you want the API to execute for you, and the sources value indicates which Live Search Engine indexes you want the query to be run against.

Step 3: Select your source type

The following are the source types supported by the current release of the Search API 2.0 Beta.


web	Searches for web content
image	Searches for images on the web
news	Searches news stories
instantanswer	Searches Encarta online
spell	Searches Encarta dictionary for spelling suggestions
phonebook	Searches phonebook entries
relatedsearch	Returns the query strings most similar to yours

Step 4: Select your front end

RIA - Silverlight

Silverlight is a framework from Microsoft that enables developers to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), using the same .NET framework and programming languages they are familiar with using in their typical .NET applications. Because of its strong integration with browsers, as well as with images and other media, it is a robust and very interesting client for building applications using the Live Search API 2.0 Beta.

Like JSON applications that live in the browser, Silverlight applications can’t normally invoke services (raw HTTP or SOAP) on domains other than the domain where the Silverlight application is downloaded from. But because Live Search API 2.0 beta publishes a crossdomain.xml policy file at the root of its domain, http://api.search.live.net/crossdomain.xml, it allows RIAs to access its endpoints, making it possible to use the Live Search API 2.0 Beta from Silverlight.

Interoperable – PHP

Another reason to maintain a more open API using HTTP (and raw XML and JSON) is to enable interoperable scenarios with Live Search API 2.0 Beta. It isn’t just for .NET programmers. For example, PHP has a powerful JSON parsing mechanism, which, given PHP is a dynamic language, enables PHP developers to program against a JSON object graph in a very straightforward way.

RSS

In additional to the XML/JSON APIs which allow a user to make explicit search requests of the different Live Search sources, these sources are also exposed via a web feed mechanism formatted using Really Simple Syndication (RSS). In addition, the RSS endpoint is open and doesn’t require an App ID. Any user can make a feed request of the API and subscribe to that feed using his favorite feed reader. The feed reader can then take care of maintaining state, and the user will be notified whenever there is new data.

This is the only part of the new Live Search API 2.0 beta that can be used by end users, since it is the only URI that doesn’t require an App ID as part of the query string.

Step 5: If you want to Monetize

Another feature of Live Search 2.0 is ad-serving capability. If you sign up for a Live Search API 2.0 Beta App ID and opt into the adCenter terms of use, and apply for an Ads unit ID thru adCenter as listed on our Developer Center (http://search.live.com/developers) once approved, you can integrate ads into your web pages using simple XML or JSON APIs. Ads are just another content source, so all the information about the other search sources applies to the ad source, although there are a few additional required query string parameters and an additional adCenter Unit ID.

BOOK REVIEW: More Effective C#

John Alexander — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:31:42 GMT

Capsule Review of

More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#

by Bill Wagner

I really found Bill's previous book (Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C# (Effective Software Development Series)) very useful. I've recommended in many classes I've taught and also to clients while consulting.

More Effective C# enhances the original with C# 3.0 and LINQ additions. Bottom line: If you want to be a serious developer that continually hones his (or her) craft, then you need this book. Bill has done an excellent job of taking his considerable development expertise and distilling it into very practical pointed advice. I cannot recommend this great book enough!