ASP Live! Sessions
Wednesday, October 25
Using the Membership Features in ASP.NET 2.0 Intermediate
Chris Kinsman, Vertafore
10:30 a.m.
ASP.NET 2.0 provides a rich set of controls and the backend to allow no-code solutions to managing users and roles. In this session we will take a look at how ASP.NET 2.0 significantly reduces the effort on the part of the developer to add user or role based authentication to their code. Learn how to set up membership and roles, use the built-in controls and write code to interact with the membership APIs.
Introducing ASP.NET Ajax Intermediate
Fritz Onion, Pluralsight
10:30 a.m.
Atlas is a new Web development technology that integrates client script libraries with ASP.NET 2.0. It enables Web sites built with ASP.NET 2.0 to integrate Asynchronous JavaScript calls using XML (Ajax) into their interfaces with ease. This session will introduce you to the fundamentals of working with Atlas including both the client components and server components of the framework. Emphasis will be placed on demonstrating practical examples of building responsive sites using Atlas controls, so come prepared to be dazzled with many demos of the power of Atlas.
Webcontrol Development Enhancements in ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced
Miguel Castro, Infotek Consulting Group, Inc.
11:45 a.m.
ASP.NET 2.0 brought to the table many great enhancements to increase productivity in the development of web applications. Accompanying these great new features that mainstream web developers are already familiar with, are some incredible improvements to the infrastructure for developing custom server controls. As in ASP.NET 1.1, server controls or webcontrols, as they are also known, are not additions to ASP.NET’s infrastructure; they are at the very heart of its architecture. Becoming intimate with this technology gets you closer than ever to understanding exactly how ASP.NET really works. The development of custom webcontrols has not been a technology embraced by all ASP.NET developers. With the great new enhancements you’ll learn here, maybe you too will get as hooked as I have. Learn about Template Editing, SmartTags, AutoFormatting, WebResources and the Ajax-based Callbacks, and how easy it is to integrate all of this into Webcontrols of your own. This presentation expects established knowledge of custom control development and provides a fast-paced tour through the most exciting control development features in ASP.NET 2.0.
Serious ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart Customization Advanced
Benjamin Day, Benjamin Day Consulting
11:45 a.m.
Ever tried to customize how your ASP.NET WebParts look? Sure, you can change colors and fonts, but what if you want to change the layout? What if you need to put the WebPartVerb menu in a different place? That goes beyond simple tweaking; now you need custom WebPartChrome. In this session, I will do a deep-dive on the ASP.NET WebParts architecture and show you how to seriously customize your WebParts by creating your own WebPartChrome and WebPartZone, all without losing the benefits of personalization.
Make the Most of Master Pages in ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced
Scott Allen, OdeToCode
2 p.m.
Master pages in ASP.NET 2.0 are the first step in creating a consistent and maintainable web interface. In this session we will go beyond simple layout and see how to use inheritance, events, strong typing and nested master pages to take full advantage of the master page features.
SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Intermediate
Bill Wolff, Agility Systems
2 p.m.
Learn about advanced techniques for building reports with SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and the Visual Studio-based Report Designer. Topics include how to use the built-in expression language, report parameterization (data driven, multi-valued and hierarchical), supporting multiple data sources (including relational, multi-dimensional and XML), and making reports interactive. You’ll see the new features available to report designers in SQL Server 2005, along with walkthroughs of sample reports and tips and tricks for using the Report Definition Language (RDL).
Introduction to SQL CLR Development Intermediate
Andrew Brust, twentysix New York
3:15 p.m.
It’s made headlines, and it’s pretty cool: SQL Server 2005 integrates the .NET common language runtime and can host stored procedures, triggers, functions and user-defined types written in VB or C#. In this session we’ll cover the A-B-Cs of writing SQL CLR code. You’ll learn how to take advantage of SQL Server’s integration with Visual Studio for development, deployment and debugging of your SQL CLR assemblies. You’ll also learn how to deploy plain Class Library assemblies using nothing more than T-SQL commands. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll look at when and where SQL CLR programming is best used, and when you’re better off sticking with T-SQL.
Ajax-Style Web Development with ASP.NET and Atlas Advanced
Vishwas Lele, Applied Information Sciences
3:15 p.m.
AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)-style Web applications are growing in popularity because of the demand for richer user experience in browsers. A number of high profile sites including Windows Live, Google Maps and A9 are based on the AJAX-style. This session will begin with AJAX fundamentals. Next, we will look at the challenges involved in building AJAX-style applications. This will lead us into a detailed walkthrough of "Atlas," a framework for building richer cross-browser web applications.
Implementing SOA Design Patterns with .NET Advanced
Robert Daigneau, Monster.com
4:30 p.m.
Service-Orientation offers the promise of greater interoperability and ease of integration, but in order to realize its benefits we must evolve the way we architect solutions. While many of the lessons learned from Distributed Object-Oriented Architectures can be leveraged, much of what we did “back in the day” will not help us to achieve the goals of SOA. In fact, many of the old ways have become Anti-Patterns. Join us in this session to learn how the .NET platform and Microsoft’s new “Web Service Software Factory” can be leveraged to rapidly deliver versioned, interoperable, extensible and easy-to-maintain web services. All concepts will be presented with an eye towards the Windows Communication Foundation (a.k.a. Indigo).
MSBuild – Seize Control of Your Build Process Intermediate
Walt Ritscher, Scandia Enterprises
4:30 p.m.
Microsoft quietly slipped a powerful build automation tool into the .NET 2.0 release. MSBuild is a task based build engine that automates the steps needed to create your application. It easily performs critical jobs such as: running automation tests, creating installers, generating documentation or CHM files, and file management. Although it is completely integrated with Visual Studio, it's even more powerful when you learn how to modify the build files yourself. You'll learn how to extend MSBuild with your own custom tasks. We'll also look at several open source libraries that extend MSBuild with interesting tasks: creating zip files, uploading files to your production server via FTP, working with source control servers (VSS, Subversion, and Vault), updating SQL Server databases, writing to the registry and running FXCop. During this session you will see how to exert maximum control over your build process.
Thursday, October 26
Asynchronous Pages and Tasks in ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced
Fritz Onion, Pluralsight
10:30 a.m.
There is an alluring new attribute on the @Page directive in ASP.NET 2.0 called 'async'. Setting it to true means that you want to service that page on a different thread - and that's where the fun begins... This talk looks at when and where you might consider introducing asynchronous pages in your applications, and then how to subscribe to necessary delegates to perform work asynchronous to the request thread. We will cover various techniques for actually servicing requests in secondary threads, including the common scenario of making asynchronous Web service invocations from a page. This talk also covers the new asynchronous tasks introduced in 2.0, along with some compelling examples of combining these features with the new asynchronous features of ADO.NET 2.0.
Serious SharePoint WebPart Customization Intermediate
Paul Sheriff, PDSA, Inc.
10:30 a.m.
In this session you will learn the ins and outs of the SharePoint API including how to copy and delete files, archive files and how to use the SmartPart. In addition you will learn the different security scenarios that you need to be concerned with when creating SharePoint web parts. We will discuss the differences you will encounter between SharePoint V2 and SharePoint V3 as well.
Managing User Attributes with ASP.NET Profile / Personalization Intermediate
Chris Kinsman, Vertafore
11:45 a.m.
Although ASP.NET has always supported storing information about users in Session state, that information only persisted as long as the session was active. What if you need to save information about users of your site long term? You could create your own data access layer and business layer to handle this common need, but ASP.NET 2.0 makes this simple. Using the Profile class, you have strongly typed access to information that you define to keep track of users, either authenticated or anonymous. This session drills into using this new ASP.NET 2.0 feature which can save you hours of time for each site you build.
Building Reliable Applications with System.Transactions Intermediate
Robert Hurlbut, Hurlbut Consulting
11:45 a.m.
The .NET Framework 2.0 includes the System.Transactions namespace that enhances transactional support for managed code. We’ll discuss how System.Transactions can handle transactions without using other common practices such as deriving from a ServicedComponent, using interception or using reflection. Designed to integrate with SQL Server 2005, System.Transactions supports the intelligent and automatic promotion of local lightweight transactions to fully distributed transactions. We’ll walk through a real application built with System.Transactions to take advantage of promotable transaction support with a simpler code model than previously found in .NET 1.0/1.1.
Extreme ASP.NET Data Binding Advanced
David Yack, Colorado Technology Consultants
2 p.m.
How many demos have you watched that show you how to put the controls on the page, but forget to tell you what to do next? Extreme Data Binding looks at how to further leverage the Data Binding capabilities in ASP.NET 2.0 once you have put the controls on your page. Starting with some of the common problems you will start to encounter such as handling validation and catching errors. Have you noticed that you’re configuring the same Data Source control on multiple pages? Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to set the same options every time you needed a product drop down? We will explore techniques for customization and extension of the Data Binding controls and how to increase your team productivity and consistency.
Instrumenting ASP.NET 2.0 Applications for Audit and Security Advanced
Robert Hurlbut, Hurlbut Consulting
2 p.m.
A new feature of ASP.NET 2.0 is the ability to use health monitoring events to instrument your ASP.NET application. With this ability, you can track security-related events and operations as well as audit infrastructure events common to all ASP.NET applications. If you want to track additional security-related activity not covered by the standard events, or if you want to report on application-specific events, you need to create and raise custom events. This session will cover how to build custom events as well as specific guidelines to build password change events, user account lockout events and access to sensitive business logic events.
Leverage SharePoint 2007 Business Intelligence Advanced
Bill Wolff, Agility Systems
3:15 p.m.
SharePoint 2007 provides new Business Intelligence features including dashboards, KPI lists, the Business Data Catalog, BI specific Web parts, Report Center and a number of other new features. SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server Reporting Services and Excel Services integration are presented. You can use these tools to build enterprise reporting portals.
Webcontrol Templating Techniques Intermediate
Miguel Castro, Infotek Consulting Group, Inc.
3:15 p.m.
Nothing is better than watching developers use your controls, except to see them be able to extend them and add their own functionality to them. Fortunately, this does not only mean class inheritance. Using Templates, you can control exactly where you would like to offer extensibility points to custom webcontrols. Even better, ASP.NET 2.0 has eliminated the troublesome approach you had to take to be able to make control templates, “Designer-friendly.” This session will teach you what many consider to be one of the more advanced, yet powerful features of custom webcontrol development. I’ll show you how to define templates, add them to controls, allow for event bubbling, and add design-time functionality using some new enhancements provided in ASP.NET 2.0. You should already have a good understanding of custom webcontrol development for this session.
Anatomy of a Real Live ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Advanced
Robert Daigneau, Monster.com
4:30 p.m.
If you’re a developer, you probably like to take things apart to see how they work. There’s no better way to learn languages and concepts than to see these things in a real product, but how often does one get that opportunity? In this session you’ll see how a real Web site was developed using .Net 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. We’ll cover a broad range of topics, from how various .Net components and classes are used, to the architecture and design patterns used.
Testing your Web Application with Visual Studio Team System Intermediate
Jeff Levinson, The Boeing Company
4:30 p.m.
Are you new to web application development? Or have you ever used Application Center Test (ACT) to test your web application? Did it leave a little something to be desired? Always thought you should be able to test more? Want to learn how to test to ensure you wrote a quality application? You aren’t alone! Visual Studio Team System Edition for Software Testers takes web testing to a whole new level. In this session you will learn how to write ASP.NET tests, run tests and customize the tests to meet your needs. Add a database and turn your tests into Data Driven functional tests! Once you have a set of tests that work, take your application out for a spin using the load testing features of VSTS to see how your application fairs when 1,000 users or 10,000 users try to access your application at once. Find out why this is the tool for testing web applications!
