John R. Pattison
Custom software developer. IT consultant. Geek.
Windows Workflow Foundation: Building Rules-Based Workflows
Jun 14th
My second session of the day was on Workflow. This is a topic that really interests me because just about every piece of software I build has some kind of Workflow built into it. Streamlining this Workflow has the potential to save me a lot of development time. Great session that talked about how rules are processed in WF.
One a side note, great snack at break this morning — yummy cinnamon buns.
TechEd Session — IIS 7 End-to-End Overview
Jun 14th
I finally got my e-mail-to-blog interface working! I definitely have some blog catching up to do. I’m at my first session this morning — IIS7 overview. I’m excited to learn= more about what is new in v7. I’ve heard a lot of buzz around the new plug= gable architecture. It’s starting, and being webcast live too!
This was a great session that went over a lot of the highlights of IIS7. The speaker has some technical issues with keyboards gone wild, but it was beyond his control and provided some good humor first thing in the morning.
What I’m particularly excited about More >
Windows Sharepoint Services v3 Development (1)
Jun 12th
My notes from attending this Microsoft Tech Ed 2006 session…
- Site columns: represent name of column and meaning. These are useful because youc an use site columns in more than one Content Type and then they’ll share columns if they’re displayed together.
- Content Type: Item schema (set of columns), TEmplate, Parent content type, scope, workflow.
- Lists define: Navigation, settings like history, attachments, permissions, workflow.
- Content types are hierarchical.
- Site columns are definted at the site livel.
- You can have multiple content types in a view. The Content Type determines what the data entry form will look like.
- Changes can optionally be More >
Windows Workflow: Overview
Jun 12th
My notes from attending this Microsoft Tech Ed 2006 session…
- WF is a framework for building workflow into applications.
- It is part of the .NET Framwork 3.0.
- Workflow: a program defined as a set of activities, control flow, run durably and transparently
- You still have to provide a host for the workflow (i.e. instantiate the workflow objects)
- Activity Framework
- Specialized activities: Class with an execute method, returns ActivityExecutionStatus
- Composite activities: Structure, State Machine, Rules-based
- Flexible: You can change rules and add steps while WF is running
- You can develop workflow in Visual Studio 2005 or Office Sharepoint Designer
- Runtime: Hosted very easily. More >
Next Generation Data Access in ADO.NET vNext
Jun 12th
My second session of Tech Ed is on the advances coming down the pipe for ADO.NET. There’s some neat stuff coming!
Key themes — Data modeling at a conceptual level, better integration with .NET, better integratino with programming languages.
Client views
- View the data how you want the app to see it. This often involves denormalizing the data a bit.
- Implemented on teh client (MapConnection, MapCommand, MapDataReader)
- Can be designed so they are still updatable
- Follows the same pattern as ADO.NET 2.0 — just another povider.
- Behind the scenes turned back into schema of database.
Entity Data Model (EDM): Entity-relationship model, Explicit concdept of More >
Accelerating web application development with the Microsoft Enterprise Library
Jun 12th
This was a great first TechEd session for me. It went into some detail on the application blocks available as part of the Enterprise Library:
- Caching
- Configuration
- Cryptography
- Data Access
- Exception Handling
- Logging & Instrumentation
- Security
One thing that I really like is that the Enterprise Library comes with a configuration tool that will open the web.config file and make all of the appropriate entries.
DATA APPLICATION BLOCK
Uses the connection strings defined in the web.config file (nice to see).General model is to create the database with a factory, create the command object (DbCommand), add parameters, and then execute / fill the dataset.Provides a More >
Tech Ed begins!
Jun 11th
I’m here in Braintree on the way to Tech Ed 2006. If you’re not here with me and my 11,000 closest friends, you can watch tonight’s keynote live at 7PM at:
Keynote
Jun 11th
Great keynote! It’s available online as a webcast, and was broadcast live. They had that girl from 24 there, which was pretty cool, and a cool spoof on the show 24. It was tacky, but funny.
When you were entering the keynote, they had signs up warning about pyrotechnics, bright lights, noises, etc. That got my expectations up a little too much, I think. It was really cool, but no pyrotechnics.
Gigabyte i-RAM boots Windows in a matter of seconds
Jun 5th
During this week’s episode of .NET Rocks, Richard Campbell was talking about the Gigabyte i-RAM and how he can boot Windows XP in a matter of seconds. This piqued my curiosity, so I dug a little deeper and discovered that this is a relly neat solution! Gigagbyte’s product is a PCI card that pulls power off the computer’s bus, but in all other regards works as an SATA drive. The card actually has an SATA connector that you cable to your controller. On the card, there are 4 slots for DIMMs, each capable of holding up to a 1GB chip. So together, More >
Lightbox Javascript
Jun 2nd
Every once in a while, you run across a script on the web that just makes you say “WOW!”. Today, I found it at Lokesh Dhakar’s Lightbox JS v2.0 script. I actually ran across this script running on Scott Hanselman’s blog and checked the source to see what he was using (thanks Scott!). The things I really like about this script are (1) how very simple it is to use and (2) how it is nicely backwards-compatible if javascript is broken or if the script just doesn’t work for some reason (in which case your code will just open the window). I More >