VS2010 was release two days ago, so last night I installed it to my work laptop. I had RC1 installed in HyperV, which is what AI use for demos but to finally have the RTM on my work environment was a nice change. I wound up staying up later than normal because I was so excited playing with everything. Almost like a giddy kid on Christmas Day. While I was running the install I started thinking of the road Visual Studio has been down and where it is now. VS2010 really revolutionizes how we develop .Net apps by providing a mature toolbox of new technologies when comparing it to the past releases of .Net 3.5 and VS2008.   You start seeing a more mature change from Web forms and MVC and windows forms to WPF, a more robust Silverlight and Entity Framework and how building WCF services is no longer questioned as a taboo, but now just a part of everyday development from connected distributed solutions to working with AJAX. Also, major improvements and more limelight for WF4.0 which makes it more adoptable as a process engine and building declarative business rules.

I really think customers will adopt VS2010 much faster than they have previous Visual Studio because of the maturity with these new technologies. Developing applications with VS2010 is just faster and more flexible than anything we have had in the past. However this can also be confusing with all of these new options, but Microsoft is doing a better job than ever by getting "How To's" out and seasoned developers should be able to quickly understand how to benefit from the new framework patterns and technology. Kind of interesting, but "how we" architect solutions also gets new names and patterns.

Hopefully when or if you have already cracked open the box for VS2010 you are pleased too. Obviously, the best thing to do is to embrace this paradigm shift by grabbing it with both hands and pulling it to you!

"Times they are a changing"....Bob Dylan said it best! Just got the word that VS2010 RC was released to MSDN Subscribers yesterday. Looks like MS will be opening up to everyone else tomorrow(Feb 10, 2010). It also seems that from Beta 2, there have been significant performance improvements. It also seems it is pretty straight forward making the migration from Beta 2, which only requires an "Add/Remove Programs" and then overlay of the RC.

Since my career started after graduating college, I have always maintained a job until two Fridays ago. At that point I had a fear that I had never realized before and that was how I was going to support my family. It really did not even hit me till I sat at the dinner table that night with my family. I actually got choked up while observing my kids and wife. I think it hit me that I did not have a job anymore. All of a sudden I realized that I needed to make some quick decisions. Since I had a side company, I decided to setup a quick website and start working on the dream I had always had... working for myself.

I was laid off on a Friday and the next Monday I was able to land my first consulting gig with a team of great people which was a huge boost for my morale. I owe it all to great friends that helped me find the job and others who helped keep my chin up. When some people lose their job, they get so depressed that it is hard to think positive and bounce back. This is the main reason why I decided to write this post, because for a short period of time I thought the same and I wanted to share with others that they can bounce back too. I never thought this would ever happen to me and it did! This tells me it can happen to anyone but the important thing is to understand that this is a tough economy and it is sometimes not anyone's fault, it is just the side affect of the current market. The most important thing is to never let the skills you are good at fade away. Even if you move into a management role, it is important to keep your chops up to date.

Once again I have been awarded Microsoft MVP! Each year I am humbled to receive it because it is a reward based on giving which makes it better each time, because Microsoft is constantly raising the bar on who gets the reward. It is nice to know Microsoft takes note and rewards its community leaders and people who are constantly try to help other IT professionals. This year I have set goals for supporting the Microsoft Community that will top my previous years. I hope every first blog post for coming years can be titled he same:) 

Better than the latest movies in theaters now are the videos of what is up Microsofts sleeves. Check it out here.

WOW...Florida is putting on a speaking contest like no other. If you think you are a good speaker and you have a passionate topic, we need you. To be more specific, JaxDUG needs you to represent because we anticipate winning this event. UserGroups within different regions all over Florida will be competing in this event. Our goal is to win regionals, however whomever wins regionals gets to compete in the finals.

The first phase is where User Groups and other recognized organizations focusing on the Microsoft platform hold events and nominate a speaker to participate in the Regional competition.  We are hopeful that each User Group will nominate a speaker to send to the Regional competition.

The Regional competition is the second phase in the competition and will be held at a location convenient to the User Groups assigned to this region.  Each region will select, in a regional competition, a regional Speaker Idol and a runner up.  During this phase we will need volunteers to serve as regional coordinators and help drive participation.  Microsoft is offering a $200 pre-paid credit card to be given to (confirmed) regional winners so that they might travel to the finals.  If the winner is unable to attend the finals, this credit card is to be given to the runner up. 

The final phase of the competition is to be held in Lakeland Florida in March of 2010.  Each finalist is allotted approximately 10 minutes (depending on individual event rules) to deliver their message and compete against others in their competition. 

All Regional finalists will be recorded on digital video and published on the Channel 9 Tool Shed Shows website (http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/toolshed).  The top contestant will be honored and given the distinction of being the winner of Florida’s Microsoft Community Speaker Idol Competition.   Speaker Waivers will need to be signed before the event begins.  Those in attendance at the finals will also need to sign a waiver as the will be in crowd reaction shots.

If you are interested or have more questions please contact me

 

Topic:	Top 10 SQL Server Mistakes
Date:	Thursday, October 15th, 2009 6pm
Speaker:	Kevin KlineSQL Server encompasses a wide variety of domains – administrative, development, and design. But despite years of experience with relational databases, SQL Server practitioners frequently make the same mistakes over and over again. Wouldn’t you like to learn about those mistakes before they ever happen?  This session will answer questions like: -       What’s the most common Transact-SQL programming mistake and how do I fix it?-       How do database designers cause problems for future generations of application developers and database administrators?-       Why do inexperienced database administrators make their own job more difficult and less efficient?  There are a short list of mistakes that, if you know of them in advance, will make your life much easier. These mistakes are the “low hanging fruit” of application design, development, and administration. Once you apply the lessons learned from this session, you’ll find yourself performing at a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness than before.
Sponsor:	QuestLocation: Bank of America building 9000 Southside Blvd Building 500 (2nd Floor in Sea Oats) Please RSVP to bknight@pragmaticworks.com

My pal Sayed is giving a live presentation on MSDeploy as a part of the MVP TV program this Wednesday, October 14, 2009.

Register here

Abstract

Deploying ASP.NET Websites has always been a challenge and different teams have used different approaches to overcoming those challenges. Microsoft has offered some support for making deployment easier in the past. For instance they first introduced Web Deployment Projects for Visual Studio 2005, and also have a version for 2008. Web Deployment Projects do greatly simplify the process of calling the aspnet_compiler and aspnet_merge tool but even though their title states "Deployment" they had no support for physically deploying the site. Now Microsoft has introduced the Web Deployment Tool, also known as MSDeploy. MSDeploy will bridge the gap between taking a web site and physically deploying it to its destination. With MSDeploy you can easily and very effectively perform tasks such as pushing an ASP.NET site (Web site, Web Application Project, ASP.NET, etc) from one machine to several other machines. This is achieved by the target machines having the MSDeploy Remote Agent Service installed and running. You can sync two different Web Sites that are hosted in IIS, you can create a web package (simply a .zip file) and use that as your source, you can sync two different folders, and many other options. Another compelling feature of MSDeploy is that it will be integrated into Visual Studio 2010. From Visual Studio 2010 you can compile your ASP.NET Web Application Project and then create the Web Package which contains all your content files plus IIS settings. This one file will full describe your web.

MSDN Tiki Hut Roadshow - Fall 2009 Run - Blend3 / Silverlight 3/ Opening the Tacklebox on Win7 Dev 

Joe healy and Russ Fustino will be sharing their knowledge next month, October 15, 2009...Here are the sessions that will be covered!

Session 1: Opening the Tacklebox on Windows 7 Development
We'll riffle through the Win7 tackle box and teach you to rig up your Windows 7 development techniques. We'll explore the codepack APIs, sensor kit and APIs, the new desktop widget metaphors, multi-touch, virtualization strategies, and more. Expect a ton of short code snippets illustrating key points. This session will go long, and you’ll be able to reel in all the extras online.

Session 2: Expression Blend 3.0 … The game has changed
The Expression Blend 3.0 SketchFlow feature changes the game when it comes to both developers and designers becoming integrated on the development and design process. You’ll learn how to prototype WPF and Silverlight Applications with amazing speed, and provide review, feedback and documentation with ease. In addition to SketchFlow, you’ll be able to attach behaviors to visual elements in Expression Blend 3 to make them behave a certain way, such as drag and drop or physics. Did you know you can do a direct import of Photoshop and Illustrator? The answer is… yes you can! Learn how to import your Photoshop or Illustrator assets and preserve layer information as all is converted to XAML. You can then take a piece of imported XAML and easily convert it to a button or other element. You don’t want to miss this session.

For ITPro's - the ITPro Tiki Hut will be taking place during the am of each event.  Blain Barton will be leading up such topics as Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7, DirectAccess With Windows 7, and Optimizing Your Environment with Remote Desktop Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. To register for this event go to https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032421663&culture=en-US .

No, but now that I have you hater's and lover's of LINQ here I can share my frustrations, however they are not with LINQ. The reason I chose the title of this blog post was because I did think it was LINQ! Just like when I cannot find my keys at home as I am rushing to work, I will in my mind blame my 2 year old son and then discover I left them in my pants from the previous day. All of us like to put the blame on something when we are unsure and in our minds it makes sense to.

In this case I had three tables.

 

I used LINQ to grab the data, and a collection of Ordered Items was returned along with a collection of ProductGroups and finally Groups associated with that product. As I looped through my Ordered Items after the second OrderedItem I kept getting the following error...Object reference not set to an instance of an object. As I tracked the origin of the error within the WF Rules Engine ruleset being processed I was able to find the method that was throwing the error. Debugging through the code however did not help as the error was thrown each and every time at certain points where LINQ queries (for objects) were being processed. This is where I started blaming LINQ like the analogy I gave above about blaming my two year old son. I tried researching this still no clue. I spent hours trying to understand where my code was going wrong. This is where the problem really started frustrating me. I then started querying the database to find the ProductGroups and Groups that were being pulled and comparing them to what LINQ had in its collections during debug. Since the database had already been created, I knew that there was a history for tables not having relationships (FK's, PK, etc.) so I also verified them. The last time I ran my test and right after I got my pal John Bates to lend me a second pair of eyes, I noticed that the records that were being pulled by LINQ were different then the records I was pulling via SQL Server Studio by one. So I was actually missing a record. Now in LINQ I was actually querying conditions based on the fields within the Group table through the ProductGroups. Come to find out there were some groups that were not in the Group Table that had relationships within the ProductGroup. Through my experience in writing code, I have never experienced anything like this; hence this was what caused me to waste so much time.
So remember, in most cases it is better for experienced developers to anticipate that bugs are a result of their own code. Second, it is ok to question the database. Check the data integrity even though you have some snot nose telling you the data in production is correct and it is your fault with a face of smug. Third, don't blame LINQ...Instead relish all of the time you have forgotten it has saved you in past development efforts.