MyTechEd #Closing and final impressions

The closing presentation was informational as to what is coming down the line in terms of next generation user interfaces, etc. The insert by Arthur Goldstuck on broadband was very interesting.

Unfortunately I did not win the MVix PVR, or any other goodies for that matter.

http://www.worldwideworx.com

MyTechEd #17 - Practical Web Testing

This was a very valuable presentation with lots of practical examples. Great to know some things are already available in Visual Studio 2008.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #16 - Inside T-SQL: Enhancements, Techniques, Tips & Tricks

This was a very informative session.

Keyword from the session: Insert statement multiple values, Common Table Expression, Using Hierarchy functionality for sorting, Inline functions, OUTPUT clause for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #15 - Understanding Microsoft ASP.NET Under the Covers

This was a VERY interesting session by a very knowledgeable presenter, Nic Goossens.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #12 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Overview for the Business Application Developer

An overview session with some demos.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #13 - How Microsoft and Others Use Team Foundation Server

This was a whiteboard session with some good panelists.

Some keywords from the session: Code Coverage, TFS Branching Guide

Links: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/, http://www.codeplex.com/TFSBranchingGuideII

MyTechEd #11 - Using Virtualization to Improve Application Quality with Team System - Lab Management

This was a very interesting session to see some of the features that will be available in VS 2010 with regards to testing. Large software projects can definitely benefit from this. It just seems complex to set up and get going.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #10 - A Lap around Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Another most useful session by Mike Palermo.

Link to presentation: Download here

MyTechEd #9 - Team Build Tips and Tricks

This session showed amongst other things how you can customize the build process to automate versioning, etc. Quite useful. And I had information overload, I don't think there is a human that can consume all the words the presenter spoke in 1 hour.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #8 - A Strategic Comparison of Data Access Technologies from Microsoft

This was a whiteboard session, so there are no slides available. My personal opinion is that I will leave the Entity Framework, etc. to still mature a bit. Seems like Linq to SQL is just about dead, glad I did not jump on that bandwagon.

MyTechEd #7 - Guiding Your Query Plans in Microsoft SQL Server for Improved Query Performance

This was a VERY informative session. The presenter knows her stuff. This is also where I picked up on the NOLOCK issue I posted about previously.

With SQL2008 you can now give hints via SQL Management Studio, instead of having to code them into your SQL. This allows for easier application tuning, as no build-test-deploy of the application is needed.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #6 - What's new in SQL Azure

The starting pitch was "Everything you can do with SQL Server you can do with SQL Azure". The longer the session carried on, the more limitations came to light. Granted, they are not necessarily show stoppers, but could be depending on the application you might want to deploy.

Link to presentation: not available

MyTechEd #5 - SQL 2008: Best Practices and lessons learned

The presentation/presenter was a bit boring. There might be some value in the slides though.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #4 - Entity Framework Tips and Tricks

This session shared some tips and tricks on Entity Framework

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #3 - Architectures: The good, the bad & the Ugly

A presentation about good and bad architectures.

Link to presentation: download here

MyTechEd #2 - Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

Presenter: Mike Palermo

The session started off a bit rocky due to the fact that Mike's laptop and the projector did not want to go to a higher resolution than 640x480 or800x600, can't remember, all I know it was big and not a lot fitted on the screen. It was really unfortunate, as it was a great session.

One of the nice things we were shown was how to create your own code snippets.

Snippets are XML documents, so they can be created/edited easily. The standard code snippets are stored in Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC#\Snippets\1033\Visual C# for C#, so you can copy one from there to My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets and edit it to your liking, obviously changing the Title and Shortcut values.

Look here for a snippet editor.

Other usefull tips were Prevent Copy on Blank Line and Toggle Clipboard. I'm not going to post every tip here, so please see Mike's speaker notes here.

Link to presentation: download here

My TechEd #1 - Dashboards & Scorecards

Presenter: Gavin Russell-Rockliff

This was an overview session to introduce the dashboarding and scorecarding capabilities available in the Microsoft platform.

The central component is PerformancePoint Server 2007, which now comes with MOSS Enterprise. A variety of datasources can be integrated into dashboard/scorecard, including SQL Services Analysis Services, Excel 2007, Excel Services and Relational Tables.

Link to the presentation: download here

PerformancePoint Team Blog