Best Practices Virtual Track
The Best Practices Virtual Track features general programming sessions offered at VSLive! San Francisco aimed at your specific development needs. It’s called a “virtual track”, because instead of having sessions one after another in one room, you’ll find Best Practices sessions distributed through all of our conference packages. From Application Development Best Practices for SQL Server 2008 to Generics, Anonymous Methods, and Delegates, we’ve got you covered.
Check out these sessions. With your Gold Passport registration you can attend them all.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Using and Extending the Typed DataSet and TableAdapter, Intermediate
Jackie Goldstein
10:15 a.m.
Are you using the VS 2005 DataSet designer to design your data access code usign Typed DataSets and Table Adapters? You should be - because doing so allows you to build better data access code much faster. This session will be mainly demos that cover both the basic uses of these tools and objects, as well as techniques to extend the standard classes to meet your own specific needs. We will also take a look at some of the improvements in Visual Studio 2008.
Efficient SCM with TFS - Best Practice, Intermediate
Jeff Levinson
3:00 p.m.
Are you working with multiple products, multiple releases or common code? Don't know what source code is actually in production? Maybe you have a complex branching structure right now and it seems harder to work with than it should be. This session will show you basic and advanced branching structures, tips and tricks for promoting your code from development to production and how schedule affects the branching strategy. Learn things that the books don’t cover to make your development and release process better.
Developer Testing and Test Automation with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Edition, Intermediate
Chris Menegay
3:00 p.m.
Attend this session to learn about the single practice that can most radically improve your development for the year. Learn how to effectively incorporate unit testing into your development. We step through the Unit Testing, Web Testing, Load Testing, and Generic Testing with VSTS. In addition to coding examples, this session presents some best practices and discusses Test Driven Development (TDD) in the real world.
Visual Studio Team System Worst Practices, Intermediate
Richard Hundhausen
4:30 p.m.
Time and again, you will hear people speak about "best practices" and "preferred practices", but nobody ever warns you about the things you shouldn't be doing. Come and see if these configuration, process, and usage worst practices look familiar to you. Hopefully not!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Managing Software Releases with Visual Studio Team System, Advanced
Chris Menegay
9:00 a.m.
Team Foundation Server offers a wealth of tools to support new application development projects. But how do they apply to applications that are already released and need ongoing maintenance? What about the existing applications that you've migrated into TFS? Or even your new applications once they've reached production? In this session we'll look at branching, build and work item strategies to help with managing and auditing the rollout of releases and fixes for existing applications. Some of the techniques that we will examine are: promotion modeling, "merge by work item", cherry-picked merges, and builds based on branches. This approach will take into account application code, database schema and data changes.
Generics, Anonymous Methods, and Delegates, Intermediate
Deborah Kurata
10:30 a.m.
Generics, anonymous methods, and delegates, oh my! Come and learn all about these very important concepts. This session is both for developers who don’t know what these things are and for those who want to expand their use of these techniques.
This session begins with a brief introduction to generics. It then dives deep into using generics in both VB and in C#, including use of anonymous methods, lambda expressions and delegates to expand on generic functionality. Finally, it covers how to use reflection with generic types.
LINQ to SQL (DLINQ) for ADO.NET Developers, Intermediate
Richard Hale Shaw
10:30 a.m.
ADO.NET Developers have long faced an unfair set of choices: use the DataReader -- equally known for its speed as for the cumbersome ways in which you have to write code to use it -- or use the Typed DataSet, which offers strong type-safety but can be a performance sloth and memory hog. Not any more: DLinq (also known by its official name, Linq to SQL) offers you strong typing, great performance and the ability to access your data in a far more intuitive, Object-Oriented fashion that you could with the DataReader or the DataSet. Will you find that DLinq is a Better DataSet -- but without performance issues? How do you get started with it, and what are the Best Practices for using it? In this session, Richard will show you how. We'll start with a brief overview of DLinq mechanics and quickly move under-the-covers, calling Stored Procedures, creating wrapper classes and more. If you're largely targeting Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Express (now Compact Edition), you'll find this may be the Data Access method to invest in from now on.
Exploiting the ASP.NET Adapter Architecture, Intermediate
Robert Boedigheimer
12:00 p.m.
ASP.NET provides the ability to override control and page rendering in order to tailor the output for specific browsers or provide new behaviors. A recent example of the power of this architecture is the "ASP.NET CSS Friendly Control Adapters 1.0" provided by Microsoft that can be used to render existing ASP.NET controls with CSS rather than tables (such as the Menu control). Another great use of adapters is to use session storage for viewstate rather than a hidden client field saving bandwidth and improving performance, which can be easily accomplished with a custom page adapter. Discover how to exploit adapters on your web site, and how to use alternative rendering or behavior without abandoning existing controls!
Parallel Development in Team System, Intermediate
Richard Hundhausen
12:00 p.m.
Whether you are part of a team working on a single product, or supporting many versions of a product, you are working in parallel. Fortunately, Team Foundation Server supports parallel development out of the box, so long as you configure it correctly, and follow the proper guidance for setting up your version control folders, branches, and check-in policies. Attend this session and learn how to never be blocked by an exclusive lock again.
Build Better Applications with VSTS for Database Professionals, Introductory
Jeff Levinson
12:00 p.m.
Not working with a tool to help you manage your database? Are you working with a tool but find that the objects in the tool don’t match the objects you’ve deployed? Still working with production data in your test environment? Not actually testing your database code? If you answered yes to any of these questions then this session is for you. Learn about Microsoft’s Database Professionals edition for Visual Studio Team System. Get an overview with demonstrations on how to use the features of this tool, and what it can do for your organization! Write better quality code with DB Pro’s!
Exploit WPF Graphics without Wounding the Eyes, Intermediate
Brian Noyes
12:00 p.m.
WPF has a lot of powerful capabilities for styling and animation that if used uncontrolled can leave you with a UI that looks like it was designed by someone on an overdose of psychotic drugs. This session will demonstrate how to leverage the power of the styling and animation features of WPF to create pleasing UI experiences that make your application more intuitive and visually pleasing for your users, instead of making them seek therapy. You’ll learn how to apply styles, control template, and subtle uses of animation and transparency to give a great UI experience that catches the eye and sells your product to your customers or project sponsors.
Application Development Best Practices for SQL Server 2008 Service Broker, Advanced
Ketan Duvedi
3:00 p.m.
This talk will give an overview of the different scenarios in which it is beneficial to use SQL Service Broker with special emphasis on the Data Push scenario. It will cover the common programming pitfalls and the recommended best practices to maximize your application performance. Experienced service broker folks will get a chance to learn about the configuration and runtime troubleshooting enhancements in SQL Server 2008.
