October 8th / Julie Lerman, What's new with EF 4.0

10 Things to Look Forward to in Entity Framework 4

Have you been waiting with anticipation for the next version of Entity Framework ? There's a lot to see in the new EF4. From a much improved designer, to foreign key support, POCO, lazy loading and more. If you have been using EF, you'll want to see what's changed. If you have shunned EF, it's time to take another look. The list is long so we'll look at the 10 things that I find most noteworthy and are available. (Note that some new features won’t be available until Beta 2 is released so cross your fingers that it’s out in time for this presentation.)

Julie Lerman is an independent consultant and .NET Mentor who has been designing and writing software applications for 20 years. She's also the author of Programming Entity Framework, an O'Reilly book that was published earlier this year. Julie is well known in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and INETA Speaker. She is a prolific blogger, a frequent presenter at technical conferences in the U.S., Canada, and even some far reaches of the world and author of articles for MSDN Online, MSDN Magazine and other well-known technical publications. Julie presents on a wide variety of topics including ADO.NET, Web services, Tablet PC development, and other aspects of just getting your .NET applications to work the way you want them to. Julie lives in Vermont where she runs the Vermont.NET User Group, is a board member of the Vermont Software Developers Alliance, and a member of the Champlain College Software Engineering Advisory Board. You can read Julie's blogs at www.thedatafarm.com/blog and http://blogs.devsource.com/devlife/content/daily_work/.

Code Camp is a place for developers to come and learn from their peers. This FREE community driven event has become an international trend where peer groups of all platforms, programming languages and disciplines band together to bring content to the community.

Check out their webpage for more information and to register as a presenter or attendee.

There are already 18 presentations registered for this one day event.

Register now for this event, there's limited room and it will probably fill up fast! This is happening on Monday, May 18th at the Olympia Center in downtown Olympia.

Event Overview
Miss MIX or want a refresher? Join us for MSDN Events Unleashed: The Best of MIX!

What’s New in Silverlight 3?

Are you interested in building business-focused Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)? Would you like to take advantage of 3D in the browser, but assume it is too hard? Have you wanted to take a Silverlight application offline? Then this session is for you. We will explore and illustrate the new features of Silverlight 3, including the following:

· Support for perspective 3D

· Offline Support

· .NET RIA Services which simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure

This session will begin with a brief overview of Azure and discuss some of the announcements made at MIX. We will then illustrate through demo how to build a Windows Azure application from the ground up. We will illustrate how to consume Azure Table Storage, how to host services, web pages and Silverlight components, as well as how to deploy your solution to the cloud.

MVC 1.0 vs ASP.Net Webforms

Have you heard about the new ASP.NET MVC framework from Microsoft and wondered what it was all about? Are you curious whether this replaces ASP.Net WebForms? Well in this session you will learn how to use the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern to take advantage of your favorite .NET Framework language for writing business logic in a way that is de-coupled from the views of the data. In addition, we will talk about the pros and cons of both MVC and Web Forms, how to determine the best choice for a specific project, various techniques and patterns used to build MVC applications vs. Web Forms applications, and the implications for using each approach.

Threat modeling is an engineering discipline you can use to help you identify threats, attacks, vulnerabilities and countermeasures that are relevant to your particular application and its environment. The threat modeling activity helps you to:

• Identify your security objectives.

• Identify relevant threats.

• Identify relevant vulnerabilities and countermeasures.

Come see how you can identify your threats to build more secure systems.

Speaker Bio

Justin Goodhart is the Lead Developer and President for Chestnut Level, Inc. He also works for the Department of Social & Health Services (DSHS) as an Information Technology Specialist. Over the years he has worked with Threat Modeling on projects for the Internet and Internal networks to reduce their susceptibility to being cracked, and encourages other developers to see how they can improve the security of their applications.

Meeting Specifics
April 9th, 7 - 9 pm
Olympia Center (222 Columbia NW)
All attendees are eligible for the prize drawings. Past prizes have included technical books, passes to Devscovery, copies of Visual Studio, Vista, Office 2007 and more.

Don't forget to let your friends and co-workers know about this meeting. Direct them to www.ssdotnet.org for more information.

Julie Lerman's book, Programming Entity Framework, is now available through Amazon or O'Reilly. This book is the result of a lot of hard work by Julie and as one of her technical reviewers, I can say with certainty that it's worth buying if you are interested in knowing more about Entity Framework.

Good job and congratulations, Julie.. how does it feel to get your life back?

February 12th / Bobby Johnson on Dependency Injection: A Beginners Guild to Why Ninjas Are Awesome

This presentation will describe the core concepts of Dependency Injection (DI), first described by Martin Fowler in his article Inversion of Control (IoC) Containers and the Dependency Injection Pattern.

The presentation will highlight the benefits of Dependency Injection including:

* · Creating classes that are easier to unit test in isolation
* · Promotes loose coupling between classes and subsystems
* · Adds potential flexibility to a codebase for future changes
* · Can enable better code reuse

Bobby will also be sharing simple and fun examples on how to use DI along with a real world example of its use in a web-based application.

BIO

Bobby Johnson is a Senior Software Developer at Alliance Enterprises, a performance management software company based in Lacey, Washington. As an avid enthusiast of Agile methods and a self proclaimed code monkey, Bobby is currently focused on overseeing the implementation of Agile techniques like DDD, TDD, CI into Alliance’s software and quality engineering processes. Prior to joining Alliance, Bobby worked at the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries as a Development Specialist.

To find out more about Bobby and his technical misadventures visit his blog at www.iamnotmyself.com.

Pizza will be provided by Alliance Enterprises, bring your own beverage. Thanks, Alliance!

I'm very happy and excited to announce that my family will be expanding in the coming year, welcoming a new spawn in July, if the project goes as expected. My wife doesn't have morning (or any other time of day) sickness, or food cravings or food aversions.. doesn't seem fair somehow. She is tired a lot more than usual, and can be found on the couch, watching TV through her eyelids variously throughout the day.

Our daughter is very excited about becoming a big sister.

2009 is going to be quite a year for us.

Continuous Integration and Defense In Depth: Experiences at Microsoft

Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of building and testing the application under development. Usually right after each and every check-in. CI grew out of the agile software development community but can add value to almost any project. This talk will describe the basic approach to CI and also some other practices teams can adopt to get even more out of their investment in CI. The talk will also cover the Microsoft patterns & practices team’s experience with CI and show some of the likely cost savings of adopting this practice on your team.

Speaker Bio

Ade Miller is currently the Development Manager for Microsoft’s patterns & practices group (p&p) where he manages several agile teams executing on a variety of projects. He also lead the development of the p&p Web Services Software Factory: Modeling Edition. Before joining p&p Ade was a developer and then a Development Lead on Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 and 2008.

Prior to joining Microsoft Ade worked in a variety of development environments including start-ups, consultancy and web publishing. His primary interest is in improving the way people develop software. He spends much of his time trying to figure out what being “agile” really means. Ade is a regular speaker on these topics, he also blogs and writes about his experiences. Ade received his BSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Southampton, UK.

Meeting Specifics
January 8th, 7 - 9 pm
Olympia Center (222 Columbia NW)
All attendees are eligible for the prize drawings. Past prizes have included technical books, passes to Devscovery, copies of Visual Studio, Vista, Office 2007 and more.

Don't forget to let your friends and co-workers know about this meeting. Feel free to forward this email and/or direct them to www.ssdotnet.org for more information.

Don't forget about Seattle Code Camp v4.0 this weekend in Redmond. For all the details, go to the Seattle Code Camp website. This is a free weekend of presentations on a wide variety of software development subjects. This isn't a 'Microsoft' only event, check out the list of sessions if you dont' believe me.

Two South Sound .NET User Group members will be presenting:

Chris Bilson is presenting 'Getting Git'

Git is a distributed version control system. It's a little different than other source control systems you may have used (Subversion, TFS, etc.), and a little more powerful too. In this session we'll talk a little bit about what the big deal is with distributed revision control systems, which ones exist, git, some tools related to git, web sites that work with git, and go through a typical git workflow.

Camey Combs (that's me!) is presenting "What's the Big EFing Deal? Even Newbies can do Entity Framework"

Have you done anything with Entity Framework yet? Have you heard of it? Curious about it? if you're new to EF and want to do some coding utilizing it, this is the session for you. Come and see what a newbie (you and your presenter) can do with EF after only a few short lessons. Bring your laptop loaded up and ready to go and follow along, building your own simple applications using EF.

ASP.NET MVC: What it is and why you care (or not)

Please join us on Thursday, November 13th for a presentation on MVC by Chris Tavares

Meeting Summary
The ASP.NET Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework is a new web development framework that sits next to the existing ASP.NET WebForms framework. Rather than attempting to abstract away the Web, MVC embraces the web programming model. The result is a very different experience for writing web apps on the .NET platform. In this talk, we’ll look at what the MVC framework is, the basics of how to use it, why it exists, and how to decide whether to use it (or not).

speaker info
Chris is a developer on the Microsoft patterns & practices team. He started his obsession with computers in third grade with an actual teletype taking to a mainframe. The job has gotten rather easier since. He’s worked in embedded systems, shrinkwrap software, developer tools, consulting, and as a developer trainer before joining Microsoft. His current projects are as dev lead / architect for Microsoft’s Enterprise Library, and consulting software designer on the ASP.NET MVC framework.

Meeting Specifics
November 13th, 7 - 9 pm
Olympia Center (222 Columbia NW)
All attendees are eligible for the prize drawings. Past prizes have included technical books, passes to Devscovery, copies of Visual Studio, Vista, Office 2007 and more.

Don't forget to let your friends and co-workers know about this meeting. Feel free to forward this email and/or direct them to www.ssdotnet.org for more information.

Congratulations President Elect Obama. Congrats to the people who supported him.

My daughter danced around the living room. I think she's gonna remember this as an adult. She told me when she went to bed that she was sure to have sweet dreams now.

We don't know yet what has happened with Prop 8 in California, but it doesn't good tonight. There are other races and measures on ballots across the country that are important to civil rights as well. But right now, I'm dwelling on the hope, the confidence Obama projected, even when he admitted we had a lot of work to do, and that it wouldn't be easy. I love listening to that man speak, my daughter has a total crush on him.

Buy a newspaper on Wednesday and keep it for posterity, history was made with a landslide.

The Seattle Code Camp v4.0 schedule has been published and there's my presentation on Day 2, right before lunch (thank goodness it's not right after lunch!).

Whats the Big EFing Deal? Even Newbies can do Entity Framework
Sunday, November 16th, 10:30 - 11:45

Have you done anything with Entity Framework yet? Have you heard of it? Curious about it? if you're new to EF and want to do some coding utilizing it, this is the session for you. Come and see what a newbie (you and your presenter) can do with EF after only a few short lessons. Bring your laptop loaded up and ready to go and follow along, building your own simple applications using EF. Software requirements to follow along with the presenter: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, with .NET 3.5 SP1, SQL Server 2005 and a copy of Adventureworks or AdventureWorksLT.
Track: General
Speaker: Camey Combs

Now is the time to donate. Let your support be known.

Here's the description for my upcoming Code Camp presentation:

What's the Big EFing Deal? Even Newbies can do Entity Framework\

Have you done anything with Entity Framework yet? Have you heard of it? Curious about it? if you're new to EF and want to do some coding utilizing it, this is the session for you. Come and see what a newbie (you and your presenter) can do with EF after only a few short lessons. Bring your laptop loaded up and ready to go and follow along, building your own simple applications using EF.

Software requirements to follow along with the presenter: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, with .NET 3.5 SP1, SQL Server 2005 and a copy of Adventureworks or AdventureWorksLT.

Seattle Code Camp v4.0 is approaching quickly, submit your sessions if you have 'em and register to attend. Remember it's Free! Free! Free!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and here’s an easy way to get involved:

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on ‘donating a mammogram’ for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn’t cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors /advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.

Here’s the web site!

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

I've decided to go for it and do a presentation at the Seattle Code Camp (v4.0, Nov. 15/16). I can't say I've been completely bullied into it (Paul!) but I've definitely been strongly nudged. I know I want to do something on Entity Framework, but I'm certainly no expert. In fact, I'm a relative newbie. My experience comes from serving as a technical reviewer on Julie Lerman's book Programming Entity Framework (now available through O'Reilly's Safari Rough Cuts). So, what can I present on? Various titles come to mind:

Even Newbies Can Do Entity Framework

What's the big EFing Deal?

and variations on that theme. My idea is to demonstrate some basic scenarios and have interested audience members follow along on their laptops. I won't be discussing the merits of NHibernate vs. EF, that's for others with more experience and more tolerance for discord. My angle is this "You've been hearing about EF. You haven't done much or anything with it, let's check it out together."

I've only got about a month to pull it together, wish me luck.

Chris Kinsman sent this out today:

It's that time of year again... Time for a Code Camp!

We are holding Seattle Code Camp November 15-16, 2008 at the DigiPen campus in Redmond.

You are getting this email because you have attended a previous code camp in Seattle. We would like to invite you to come back and help make the 2008 Code Camp a great success.

Please pass this notice on to folks you think are interested in either attending or speaking.

Speaking of speaking we are looking for speakers. If you hit the code camp site at https://seattle.codecamp.us you will see that we don't have sessions or tracks listed at this point. This code camp is a blank page at this point that needs to be colored in.

This is a great venue for presentations. If you have something you are passionate about but have never done any public speaking I encourage you to give it a try. If you are an experienced speaker this is your time to get involved in your local community and share some of your experience.

What types of topics are we looking for? Pretty much anything goes as long as:

1. It involves code

And

2. It isn't a direct advertisement for a product or service.

Yep that means that this isn't limited to .NET or even Microsoft technologies. Past code camps have included sessions on XBOX 360 development, Java, PHP, and Rails. Submit your sessions at https://seattle.codecamp.us/registered/submitsession.aspx

Alternatively if you have no desire to get up in front of a bunch of developers and impart your wisdom we could still use your help. Please promote this code camp at your user group meetings, post it on your blog, email it to interested locals and encourage your friends and coworkers to submit sessions.

Finally if you plan on attending please head to https://seattle.codecamp.us/register.aspx and register so that we can get some idea of the required space and food needs.

Looking forward to seeing you in November!

Thanks,
Chris Kinsman
Code Camp Organizer

Please join us on Thursday, October 9th, for our next South Sound DotNet meeting featuring Stuart Celarier and his Whirlwind Tour of C# 2.0 and 3.0 – The New Programming Model

Presentation Summary

From its beginning, Microsoft has been working to change how we write and think about code. Many C# developers today continue to use only the original C# 1.0 features, frequently unaware of the features introduced in C# 2.0 and 3.0, or unsure about how or when to use them. This fast-paced session examines every new feature of C# which changes the way we write code. The effect of this whirlwind tour is to appreciate the evolution of a modern programming language, understanding where we came from and how and why we got here. The tour culminates with the dramatic introduction of a new declarative, data manipulation feature, Language Integrated Query (LINQ), but there's a lot to see along the way. Fasten your seatbelts and don't blink: we're going for a wild ride!

Speaker Bio

Stuart Celarier is a Microsoft MVP on Connected Systems and a software architect working on online banking systems at Fiserv (formerly Corillian) in Portland, Oregon. He is a frequent speaker at regional .NET user groups, Code Camps, and other events. He's chaired Birds-of-a-Feather tracks at several major Microsoft conferences on behalf of INETA. He has spoken at the South Sound .NET Users Group on two previous occasions: Identity and CardSpace in 2007, and Service Oriented Architecture in 2005. Stuart blogs on technology at http://visualstuart.net.

Meeting Specifics
Oct 9th, 7 - 9 pm
Olympia Center (222 Columbia NW)
All attendees are eligible for the prize drawings. Past prizes have included technical books, passes to Devscovery, copies of Visual Studio, Vista, Office 2007 and more.

Don't forget to let your friends and co-workers know about this meeting. Feel free to forward this email and/or direct them to www.ssdotnet.org for more information.

Please join us on Thursday, September 11th, for our next South Sound DotNet meeting featuring Walt Ritscher on WPF and Databinding.

Presentation Summary

Once again Microsoft has created a new data-binding model for developers. This new binding framework permeates every corner of WPF and provides a simple and consistent way to synchronize elements and data. Any WPF element that implements a dependency property is bindable to a data-source. You can create data charts by binding shapes to an XML file or enhance your UI by binding a slider control to the current location in a media file. In WPF most of your binding can be written declaratively with XAML which simplifies the binding process. In this session you’ll learn the four cornerstones of WPF binding , ponder the BindingExtension element and see how to handle binding errors. I’ll explain how to handle data validation and show how to convert your data with custom type converters.

Speaker Bio

Walt Ritscher has trained thousands of corporate developers during the last ten years. An active speaker, his teaching schedule has taken him throughout the world providing developer training at corporations, universities, and software conferences. He has collaborated on several books and videos published for the developer market including early adopter .Net courses at Microsoft Press. Walt is currently consulting and teaching .NET, Silverlight and WPF classes for Wintellect. Walt's industry expertise has placed him on various national technology advisory boards. He is also deeply involved in the local developer community — founding the .NET Developers Association in Redmond, WA. Walt has accumulated plenty of experience as a developer —is currently a Microsoft MVP, and a member of the Silverlight Insiders and WPF Disciples. As a web programmer he has worked numerous projects including; EPA sites and the Microsoft Community Starter Kit.

Walt blogs at WPFWonderland and previously at Thinking About Code before WPF seduced him during this past year.

Meeting Specifics
Sept. 11, 7 - 9 pm
Olympia Center (222 Columbia NW)
All attendees are eligible for the prize drawings. Past prizes have included technical books, passes to Devscovery, copies of Visual Studio, Vista, Office 2007 and more.

Don't forget to let your friends and co-workers know about this meeting. Direct them to www.ssdotnet.org for more information.

Check it out, with final cover art and verbage and available for pre-order: Programming Entity Framework by Julia Lerman

She's been working on this book for a year or so (I'm sure it feels like her whole life at this point) and I can attest to the quality of it having read about half of it already in my role as technical reviewer. Her job is being smart enough to pull a ton of information into a tight package; mine is to pick apart her sample code until it's smooth like buttah. And I'm not the only reviewer, obviously. She's got a lot of very smart people checking this out from every angle. So, if you're interested in data oriented applications and figuring out what Microsoft is up to with Entity Framework, put this one on your wishlist.