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PropertyBag - March 2005
Well as I write this we, here in Scotland anyway, have been deluged in snow. All being well this will winters last breath. Starting with the next edition of PropertyBag, this email will be sent to members only. Anyway, we are not here for a meteorology lesson, lets get on with the good stuff.
DevConnections is coming to Europe!
24-27 April, 2006 — Nice, France, Acropolis Convention Center
Critical information for developers, DBAs and IT professionals using Microsoft Technologies
Access four conferences in one location with DevConnections Europe 2006:
Expresso 2.1
– This one we need to thank our good Vice Chairman George Gallagher for. Expresso is a FREE regular Expressions editor that comes with templates. Ok, some of the templates fit nicely for the US, but it’s still a nice little tool and it comes with a Regex Introduction too.
Modern Software Development
Our friend Joe Hummel has updated his webcasts from last year to cover the new features in .net 2.0. This set of webcasts, although the live ones are coming to an end now, are still available to view at your leisure.
Web Service Architecture and Design
Ron Jacobs of the patterns and practices team recently gave a webcast that covered up to the minute details of WebService Architecture and Design. Here is a paper that covers the main aspects of this mammoth subject.
Windows Mobile
Are you getting mobile with your development, or thinking about it? Well there is a new mobile development toolkit from Microsoft that gives the complete savvy on developing for Windows Mobile 5.0.
Other Mobile Development Articles
As were are on the subject of Mobile development, lets keep the ball rolling with some great articles from Developer.com.
The SQL Server 2005 Paradigm Shift
There are those who think that having the CLR inside SQL Server 2005 is a bad idea and will affect it’s performance long term. What do you think?
New to VS2005?
For those of you who haven’t yet made the jump to VS2005, here’s an article by Paul Thurrott about what VS2005 has to offer.
Refactoring In Visual Basic 2005
For those of you who are well into the latest version of VB, you might be interested in this article by Matthew MacDonald on Refactoring. The Refactoring tool available for VS2005 users as a few download from Developer Express, makes life easier for maintaining our application code. Matthew MacDonald adds his take on the subject here.
Visual Basic Web Magazine
We have a new source of articles and resources at the VB Web Magazine. Lots of good stuff here.
Still with VB6 and don’t see why you should change?
Is VB6 still your main development tool? IF you have business reasons for this, then great, don’t let me try and convince you otherwise. However, if it’s the learning curve that’s putting you off, see this article from Microsoft about why moving to VS2005 isn’t really that hard.
ADO .NET Performance Tips
We all like to get the most performance from our applications as we can, one of the things that is always up for much debate is database performance and in particular using ADO.NET to get the best from it. This article has some great tips.
Are you Linq-ed?
Vs2005, is barely out of its box and already we are being told about the next round of features of our favourite development tools. LINQ, or Language Independent Query is an interesting subject that is already getting lots of press. It is going to make a big difference on how we use data in our applications. Take a look at this article here.
VB9, b-b-but...
Let’s not stop at LINQ either, VB9 is being talked about and in some considerable details. This set of resources from Microsoft discusses what features are being considered for the next version of VB.
Book of the Month
My book of the month, is Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 2005: The Language by Francesco Balena. Now, Francesco has become a regular with this book, the original tomes for VS2002 and VS2003 were hefty volumes that provided the real in depth details of how to program Visual Studio. The latest edition for VS2005, is no longer a hardback. Do not let this detract you, it is solid yet it’s contents are slightly different in that the volume’s contents are exactly what the title says, The Language. There is in depth coverage of the language covered in 4 sections.The Basics, introduces the .net framework. Along the way we meet basic language concepts and how to make effective use of control flow and error handling. This section is finished off with chapters on the VS IDE and how to effectively debug visual basic applications. Francesco then takes us on an expedition into the realms of Object Oriented Programming, covering aspects of Class fundamentals, Delegates and events and eventually on to generics. Working with the .NET framework is the title of part III of the book where we meet the .NET basic types, a thorough discussion of Arrays and Collections and rounding off with an explanation of the My namespace and assemblies and resources. The final section appropriate titled advanced topics, covers Reflection, Custom Attributes, threads and working with COM Interop. It should be noticed that this volume omits areas such as GDI+, Windows Forms and ADO.NET which were covered in the previous editions. I think that realistically this makes the book more suitable to those new to VS2005 and is not overwhelming in that it tries to cover everything. This is not to criticise the previous volumes where they did cover these areas, it’s just that Microsoft have perhaps realised that to try to cover all aspects of such a diverse development tool as the.net framework in a single volume is enough to frighten away many potential developers. My overall opinion of this book is that it’s one to have to hand, if you are working with VB2005. It builds on the knowledge that you carry over from previously developing with the previous versions of Visual Studio, while for the newcomer still has those necessary introductory items that are needed to get going
Tech-Ed Europe 2006 – New Time New Place
We are off to sunny Spain, well let's at least hope it's going to be Sunny.
Tech-Ed has moved, both in place and time. We are now looking at Tech-Ed being back in Barcelona again,
but this time in November. This time it’s running a few days before IT Forum, so if you want to catch both events,
and perhaps a few days break in between, check out the details here.
http://www.mseventseurope.com/teched/05/pre/content/default.aspx.
Well that just about wraps it up for this month. All being well the weather will be better next time you hear from me. In the meantime, any ideas, gripes or just general banter you can find me at geoff.hirst@vbug.co.uk.
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