October 2007 Entries
I wanted to pass along that due to the changes made to the Acropolis project at Microsoft my talk to the .NET Users of Fort Wayne will be on the Astoria project in November. I will still be talking to the group on November 13, 2007.
OK you read it correctly. The Acropolis project is dead in it previous form. There are a few posts about the current and future plans here, here and here. I am not surprised about this news since the Acropolis blog has been quiet for a while. The good news is that all the great work the Acropolis team did was not in vain. The work will be rolled out in the future versions of .NET and also used for guidance and best practices for building WPF Composite Clients. Thanks to the Acropolis for building a project that set the bar...
I found a cool blog post over the weekend that really made ma think and also excited me. I wanted to pass this along to my colleagues and also readers on some thinking and dialog into creating a creative team. The author intended to use the tips inside the post to base the creation of a design team's engagement with a client. I read over the tips and instantly found that these tips could be applied to software development. Developing software is something of a creative endeavor (most people would agree). I will highlight the top 3 tips I found...
Another little nugget that I think will help people developing and being more productive in there database development. I am a fan of stored procedures and functions when I develop software solutions. I like my actual CRUD methods to be implemented at the database level. It allows me to balance out my work between the application software (business logic and data access) and the database itself. Not wanting to start a religious war but I want to allow people to develop stored procedures quicker and with best practices through templates. Lets start with making your own templates in the SQL...
I was exhausted this morning after the Day of .NET yesterday. The day was even better than I expected and Jason and John did a great job making the day just move in auto pilot mode. I also want to thank Patrick and Dustin who helped me with the speakers. Once we got the registration set up, it moved on its own. I really enjoyed being the Speaker Coordinator. I got to meet so many speakers and also pick up a few fun memories in the after party. I have uploaded the photos to Flickr here. I also included the...
OK we had a speaker that notified me that he could not attend tomorrow's Day of .NET in Ann Arbor due to family reasons. Rest assure that I am stepping up to do a presentation on the Astoria project from Microsoft. I am very excited about Astoria and also it is fun to show off since examples can be done quickly and the results are immediate. I am speaking at the end of the day so I have time tomorrow to polish the talk.
For all the Windows Mobile device users... Microsoft has updated Windows Live Search and added the ability to recognize speech and also provide current gas prices in your locality. The speech update is very cool for the safety factor users need while in their cars. I am really excited for the new products the Windows Live team is bringing to the masses. I am actually using Windows Live Writer now to blog.
One interesting thing I learned this weekend at devLINK in Nashville was that there is a great deal of resources for SQL Server best practices up on the CodePlex site. I do not use the Northwind database for much but I was told by a few people at the conference not to use it and to use the new AdventureWorks Lite database for any samples and/or demos. Here is the site for the entire SQL Server Samples and Community Projects site along with the following for other samples of SQL Server technologies: SQL Server Product Samples: Database Sample Databases...
Now for something completely meaningless. There is a great site that will take a headshot photo (minimum of 640x480) of you and create a Simpson character that you can tweak to your liking. Enjoy and waste some time here.
In a past blog entry, I described the process I use quickly create database projects using Visual Studio 2005. This time around I want to show how to keep databases updated through Visual Studio after the database projects are created. Start with a current database project in Visual Studio. Below I have a screenshot of the project created in the last blog entry. It has all the stored procedures for the Northwind database included in the project. This instruction I will show only how to keep the stored procedures updated. You can follow the same process to keep functions and...
I have a brown Zune 1 (30G) and I have commented on my Zune feelings here, here and here. At midnight last night, Microsoft announced the next generation Zunes. OK so the next generation harddrive based system will be 80G, have a larger screen and will be thinner than the Zune I have. Microsoft will also sell a 8G and 4G flashed based device that is smaller and thinner. Great news but it gets better. Microsoft will also be changing and upgrading the Zune and Zune marketplace: Have DRM-free music sold from the Zune Marketplace. Have podcasts built...