11/8/2009

VPR202: Essentials of Business Programming for .NET (Desktop) 11/8/09 (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Paul D. Sheriff
Are you struggling to keep up with new technologies coming from Microsoft? Do you find that you avoid conferences because you do not understand how sessions presented relate to your work? If you wish to learn the essentials of Microsoft's new desktop client technologies, then this workshop is for you. The intent of this workshop is to prepare you for other sessions at DevConnections. If you are an experienced programmer with some other technology stack, or you have been doing web, but not desktop development with .NET, and you wish to learn the key elements behind new desktop client technologies like WPF, WCF and unit testing, you will find them here. In one day, you will learn each of these technologies step-by-step, so you will feel comfortable moving on to more advanced topics. The following topics will be covered in this workshop:

- Essentials of object-oriented programming with .NET
- Learn WPF from the ground up
- Data Access Methods for WPF (including LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, ADO.NET and Collections)
- Best Practices for the WPF Business Programmer
- Architecting for Unit Testing
- How, When and Why to use WCF

Prerequisites: You know how to program in some language and have some experience with .NET.

11/9/2009

SPR302: Advanced T-SQL for SQL Server 2005 and 2008 (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Itzik Ben-Gan
This workshop is packed with practical advice for T-SQL querying, programming and tuning in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008. The workshop covers practical problems T-SQL programmers face daily, providing different solutions for each problem, and explains in detail how to tune your code to produce robust and efficient solutions. Among the subjects that will be covered in this workshop: the OVER clause, TOP on steroids, custom aggregations, PIVOT on steroids, splitting arrays, table-valued parameters, randomization, maintaining sequences, handling hierarchies, dynamic filters, MERGE statement, Grouping Sets, and more...

VPR301: Building Business Applications with WPF (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Markus Egger
WPF has now become the tool of choice for windows developers. This pre-conference workshop teaches the basics of WPF from the ground up, easing people into this new development paradigm. This includes the basics and fundamental ideas of WPF. The workshop then proceeds into building a simple but real-life business application with data binding and business logic. The presenter also teaches attendees how to make a WPF application look professional and "next-generation" even for the graphically challenged. This workshop also touches on various design patterns, tools, and technologies available to the WPF developer.

EPR301: Building Your Own User Provisioning System in PowerShell (BRING YOUR OWN LAPTOP) (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Michael B. Smith
Prior to the release of PowerShell, going through the various machinations required to provision and modify users drove many organizations to purchase third-party solutions or stick with the tried-and-true Active Directory Users and Computers.

In this workshop, we will design and implement a GUI-based provisioning tool built in PowerShell. The user will also receive a short but intense introduction to the Windows GUI processing paradigm and investigate a couple of GUI tools that are available for PowerShell.

Bring your own laptop and take home your own working code. A basic knowledge of PowerShell is required!

VPR203: Essentials of Business Programming for .NET (Web) (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Paul D. Sheriff
Many businesses are using web technologies instead of building traditional desktop applications. Microsoft has been coming out with new features in ASP.NET, introducing Silverlight, AJAX and many other Web methodologies. If you find that you avoid conferences because you do not understand how sessions being presented relate to your work, then this workshop is for you. This seminar will prepare you for more advanced sessions at DevConnections. If you are an experienced programmer with some other technology stack, or have been doing desktop but not Web development with .NET, and you wish to learn the essential elements behind ASP.NET and other Web technologies, you will find them here. In one day you will be learn each of these technologies step-by-step, so you will feel comfortable moving on with more advanced topics. The following topics will be covered in this workshop:

- Essentials of object-oriented programming with .NET
- ASP.NET from the ground up
- Data Access Methods for ASP.NET (including LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, ADO.NET and Collections)
- Architecting ASP.NET Applications
- Unit Testing
- Do I need to use AJAX?
- The How and Why of Silverlight (or "Are Rich Internet Applications (RIA) For me?")
- Best ASP.NET Tips and Tricks for the Business Programmer

Prerequisites: You know how to program in some language and have some experience with .NET.

WPR301: Group Policy Essentials, Security, and Best Practices (9:00AM - 12:00PM)
Add'l Fee $199.00
Jeremy Moskowitz
Group Policy is the most efficient way to manage desktops in a Windows environment. If you are still running to machines to install and configure desktops, you are not taking full advantage of the power of Group Policy. In this practical half-day workshop, Jeremy Moskowitz will help you gain control of your XP, Vista and Windows 7 environment and get your life back. This is the perfect workshop to take before doing “deep dives” into the main sessions of the conference. You’ll get a little bit of everything: essentials, configuration, control, and security! We’ll warm up with some Group Policy basics. Then, you’ll learn how to get your XP, Vista and Windows 7 client machines humming with some new life. Jeremy will show you how to manage your environment with GPOs. You’ll get some “solid base hits” to ensure you can go back to work with some good ideas you can immediately put to use. For instance, learn how to zap printers down to your computers, and remotely deploy software to your users’ desktops, and learn how to use Group Policy to secure collections of machines. You’ll also get an overview of the Group Policy Preferences—21 tools to help you get you out of login-script hell. We’ll examine how Group Policy can do the heavy lifting to the jobs you want to do! This workshop has XP, Vista and Windows 7 content. (NOTE: Some material is repeated in Jeremy’s regular sessions as reinforcement.)

WPR302: Implementing Server Virtualization in Your Company (1:00PM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $199.00
Alan Sugano
This half-day pre-conference workshop will give you the information to formulate a virtualization strategy for your company. It will cover the basics of virtualization including server hardware configuration, virtualization software, and tips to identify physical servers that are good virtual server candidates. We’ll examine migration strategies from the physical to the virtual world, backup strategies for your virtual server hosts and guests, high availability solutions using Microsoft Clustering and Virtual Server 2005/Hyper-V and ESX Server with High Availability, virtualizing Server 2008 and tips for incorporating virtualization into your disaster recovery plan. There is a definite learning curve with the virtualization. Learn where the potential pitfalls are and how to avoid them when implementing this new technology. When properly implemented, virtualization has the potential to save on hardware costs, simplify server management, ease bare metal restores and provide high availability for your server infrastructure.

HPR301: SharePoint BI - Building Dazzling Dashboards and Sizzling Scorecards in SharePoint (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Jessica M. Moss
Kevin Israel
Data everywhere and not a dashboard to be found! This workshop gives you the lowdown, hands-on approach to building those amazing SharePoint dashboards and scorecards that we have been hearing about. This workshop covers how to get to and aggregate that data, then utilize BI tools such as PerformancePoint to build intelligent dashboards on top of it.

HPR303: SharePoint Jump Start: Reimagining Collaboration (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Dan Holme
If you are new to SharePoint, or are trying to wrap your head around the massive potential of this powerful platform, you'll be the hero of your enterprise when you bring back the solutions you discover in this fast-paced, full-day pre-conference workshop. Dan Holme, a Microsoft MVP for SharePoint, will dive deep into the configuration, customization, and management of SharePoint collaboration. You’ll learn to build SharePoint solutions that address common enterprise challenges, and you’ll be amazed just how much you can do with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) without having to pay for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). Topics include:
• SharePoint Administration Jump-Start: What you need to know to administer SharePoint effectively, in 90 minutes or less.
• How to use SharePoint document libraries as a replacement for traditional file shares.
• Driving effective collaboration and end-user adoption with Microsoft Office 2007 applications as SharePoint clients.
• How to build “Business Intelligence Lite”, no-code, and low-code SharePoint solutions using Office 2007 and SharePoint Designer.

APR201: Silverlight 3 Development Workshop (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Dan Wahlin
Silverlight 3 provides a way to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that look and feel much like a desktop application but can be deployed like a traditional web application. In this full-day workshop, Silverlight expert Dan Wahlin will walk you through different features and tools that can be used to build Silverlight applications. Topics covered include XAML fundamentals, using layout and data entry controls, data binding, retrieving data from remote services, animations, out-of-browser options and much more. If you're looking to jump-start your Silverlight development projects, this is the workshop for you!

SPR201: SQL Server 2005/2008: Database Maintenance Best Practices (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Paul Randal
Kimberly L. Tripp
Have you been nominated as "the SQL person" on your team? Are you a developer who’s suddenly found their test database has become critical for your company’s business? Are you administering a SharePoint or TFS database or any other application/system that requires SQL Server? Have you become a DBA—even involuntarily—and do you find yourself managing SQL Server databases more and more? And, have you found that this system worked well for a while but no longer seems to perform to your expectations? Can your application really scale? And how much can you help your performance without making significant schema and/or application changes? Is there anything you can do NOW to improve this system’s performance? Luckily, the answer is yes. There are numerous improvements that you can make that have little or no impact to the application; no code changes, only improvements. Primary topics discussed: data/log file management/optimizations, tempdb, indexes, statistics, consistency checking and backup/restore strategies. Come to this workshop to find out the things you need to know to successfully manage SQL Server correctly, efficiently and optimally—a day spent here will save you many more! (NOTE: The post-conference workshop has little to no overlap with this pre-conference workshop. Indexes in this workshop are discussed from a "health" perspective - mostly related to fragmentation. In the post-conference workshop, we are focused on creating better indexes and revisiting our overall indexing strategy.)

EPR302: Transitioning to Exchange Server 2010 (8GB Laptop Provided) (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $449
Peter ODowd
This one-day hands-on workshop takes you through the process of transitioning your Exchange 2003 or Exchange Server 2007 organization to Exchange Server 2010. Exchange Server MVP Peter O’Dowd will discuss different transition methods and strategies to seamlessly move your services and mailboxes to the latest version of Exchange. In this information-packed day, you’ll use an 8GB Windows Server 2008 laptop provided by Microsoft to walk through several hands-on labs developed by Wadeware®.

Post-Conference

11/13/2009

VPS02: Azure from Top to Bottom (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Michele Leroux Bustamante
The Windows Azure Platform is Microsoft's cloud computing initiative supplying an operating system in the cloud—hosted in Microsoft data centers—in addition to data storage and other infrastructure and application services. It provides businesses with on-demand hosting, storage and management features in fashion with utility computing. This workshop will explore the cloud computing offerings from Microsoft including Windows Azure, .NET Services, and SQL Azure. You’ll learn how Windows Azure can help businesses scale operations in the cloud, and how developers can build and deploy applications and services to the cloud with familiar development tools. You'll learn about storage options offered by Windows Azure and how that compares to SQL Azure; and how to employ the Service Bus and Access Control Service. This workshop will focus on practical reasons for applications to leverage each of these cloud offerings and dive deeper into many of the core services with demonstrations. At the end of this workshop, you will understand the lifecycle for building, deploying and securing applications in the cloud.

DPS301: Build a Custom DotNetNuke Site in a Day (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Chris Hammond
Let the experts at Engage walk you through building a new DNN site from scratch. This will be an interactive session where you will work together in small groups to design, develop and implement a site, using DNN Professional Edition.

APS201: Building Applications with ASP.NET AJAX (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Scott Allen
In this workshop, we’ll explore the AJAX features of ASP.NET and see how to apply ASP.NET AJAX when building rich, interactive Web applications. We’ll look at both server-side and client-side libraries, including jQuery and the new ASP.NET 4.0 client template features. If you want to improve your site’s response time, create fantastic user experiences for the Web with the greatest reach, and remain productive while programming on the client side – then come to this workshop and bask in the glory of ASP.NET AJAX.

HPS301: Developers Deep Dive to SharePoint Server 2010 (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Scot Hillier
Andrew Connell
Very Brief Introduction to Improvements in Developer Tooling for SharePoint 2010 Developers
• Project Basics
• Developer Dashboard
Core improvements to SharePoint 2010
• Eventing improvements
• Service infrastructure
Customizing the UI
• Ribbon customizations
• Custom master pages
Sandboxed solutions
• Development
• Management
Client Object Model
• .NET
• JavaScript
• Silverlight
Lists as Data Sources
• LINQ to SharePoint
• ADO.Net Data Services
Business Continuity Services
• Creating External Lists
• Creating .NET Shims
Workflows
• Workflows with the SharePoint Designer
• Workflows with Visual Studio

VPS01: Every Class as a Service—WCF as the New .NET (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Juval Lowy
Contrary to common wisdom, service-orientation is not just for high-end applications. Every application should be service-oriented, and Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the .NET runtime for developing, deploying and consuming service-oriented applications. But what is service-orientation really about? What does it mean for mere developers? Is there substance behind the hype? In this comprehensive one-day seminar, Juval will first demystify service-orientation, and introduce the basic motivation for service-oriented applications and their operating principal and concepts. In that light, Juval will then describe what WCF is and how it is designed, and demonstrate its advantages over traditional .NET programming. You will see that WCF is more than just the next generation platform for building connected systems. In many respects, WCF is the next development platform for Windows applications, providing system features that are presently crafted by hand on top of .NET and Windows. With WCF, every class automatically benefits from these system features, from security to transactions to tracing and logging and much more. To maximize the use of these off-the-shelf plumbing aspects you should push the service boundary down into your system, but taken to its ultimate conclusion – should every class be a WCF services? And what about performance? The workshop will next demonstrate the power and productivity of WCF, contrasting WCF used granularly on every class with classic .NET in terms of performance, throughput and scalability, and will substantiated the provocative claim that every class can and should be a service. Don’t miss on this unique opportunity to understand SOA and WCF from Juval Lowy who has been part of the strategic design effort for WCF from the beginning, and who offers a profound insight on the methodology, the technology and its application.

EPS301: Exchange 2010, a Unified Communications Odyssey (8GB Laptop Provided) (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $449
Peter ODowd
Lee Benjamin
Take this one-day journey through Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and experience its new and improved features. Let the MVP team of Peter O’Dowd and Lee Benjamin lead you through hands-on-labs, including:

-- Archiving – yes, now available out of the box.
-- Mailtips – find out if your recipient isn’t available before sending the message.
-- Exchange Control Panel – Where users can manage their directory data and groups.
-- Role Based Access Control – Allows different types of users to search for different types of content across the organization.
-- Information Leakage and Protection – Transport rules and Rights Management Server unite.
-- Database Availability Groups – The new HA. No longer does a database need be associated with a single server.
-- Unified Messaging – Try the new voice to text translation, dial plans, and more…

This instructor-led hands-on-lab experience will get you deep into Exchange and guide you through these features, showing you how they are configured and how they can be used to improve your organization’s Unified Communications platform.

SPS301: SQL Server 2005/2008: Indexing for Performance (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Kimberly L. Tripp
Indexing is by far the most important aspect to database performance and health. But, do you have the right indexes? Do you have too few, or too many? And, are the indexes the RIGHT indexes? In this workshop we'll cover what makes an index useful and how to create the RIGHT indexes for a variety of different problem scenarios. In addition to looking at which indexes work for what types of queries, we'll round out the day looking at the DMVs that can help us create some of the missing indexes and drop the unused ones. Primary topics covered: index internals, indexing strategies, statistics and how to tell if your strategies are working! If you want better performance, as well as a more manageable database, this is the place to be—even if you cannot change your schema!  (NOTE: The "SQL Server Covering: Concepts, Concerns, & Costs" session (SDV307) during the conference has a small amount of overlap with this workshop but the point of the workshop will be to dive into more of the internals and details of why these decisions are so critical. We will not rediscuss the specific strategies used in the session.)

WPS301: The Desktop Is Disappearing: Reimagining Cost, Deployment, Security and Support (9:00AM - 4:00PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Dan Holme
The desktop is an endangered species. In this age of remote desktop, thin clients, laptops, mobility, and desktop and application virtualization, your enterprise must re-imagine how you architect and deliver the end user experience. This session aims at an “appliance” approach to desktops, so that the “image” applications, data and settings are managed so that users and budgets are liberated from the constraints of the “one user, one PC” model of the past. Unfortunately, the number of moving parts makes this a complicated endeavor. Dive deep into a discussion of the requirements, the solutions, and the best practices that you can apply to automate, provision, secure, and support the transition to a world where the desktop is a toaster, and perhaps a virtual toaster at that! This session will cover:

• Deployment Blast Through: A rapid-fire, practical guide to automating deployment with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Windows Deployment Services.
• Provisioning Applications and Configuration: Workflows, tricks, and tools to provision applications to users effectively, whether you use SCCM, another management tool, or the “do it yourself” application management tools you’ll learn to build.
• Data Anywhere: A deep dive into the complexities of providing users consistent and reliable access to their data and settings regardless of whether they are on a connected, disconnected, or virtual device.
• Support and Administration: Tricks and scripts for improving and provisioning secure, automated, and responsive support for the end user experience.
• The Business Side of Deployment and Support: Guidance towards the business-level efforts required to transition to the locked down, mobile, and virtual world.