11 Intensive Full-Day Workshops

Choose from a broad range of content of topics by expert presenters. VSLive!'s pre- and post-conference workshops give you more technical content than most development conferences' entire programs.

Pre-Conference — February 6

   Build a VB.NET App in One Day
   Ten Techniques for Code Reuse with Visual Studio
   Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0
   Best and Worst Patterns and Practices for C# 1.0/2.0
   Build Distributed Object-Oriented Apps with .NET
   Building and Integrating Pen and Digital Ink Capabilities into your Windows-Based
   Applications

Post-Conference — February 10

   Team-based Development using Team System
   .NET Data Access: Soup to Nuts
   .NET To The Core™: Designing and Implementing High Performance ASP.NET Solutions
   Optimizing Server-Side Processing in SQL Server
    Wrapping it all up: How do I prepare for Mobile PC Application Development and
   extreme Tablet PC Development?

Pre-Conference Workshops, Sunday, February 6

Build a VB.NET Application in One Day
Ken Getz, MCW Technologies; Paul Sheriff, PDSA Inc.
The .NET platform provides a number of different opportunities for distributed application development. From Web Services, ADO .NET, ASP.NET, to Windows Forms and COM interoperability, .NET development has lots of facets. You'll see an application built from the ground up, taking advantage of many of the .NET features with explanations of the features and the application as it's built. By the end of the day, you'll have a working application to which you can add your own functionality, and you'll have a good grasp of much of the excitement surrounding Visual Studio .NET and its associated technologies.

Ten Techniques for Code Reuse with Visual Studio
Deborah Kurata, InStep Technologies
Code reuse has been a mantra of software development for decades. .NET provides for code reuse in many ways, including inheritance, polymorphism, and code snippets. This workshop evaluates the many ways you can reuse code, from simple techniques such as clipboard "inheritance" and code snippets, through more complex techniques such as components, inheritance, polymorphism, base forms, master pages, and services. You'll learn how to take advantage of each of these techniques and the best times to use them.

Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0
Fritz Onion, Pluralsight
With more than 40 new server-side controls and many new pieces of Web infrastructure, ASP.NET 2.0 brings more new features than any Web development technology in recent memory. We'll offer an introduction to the new features of ASP.NET 2.0. Leave with a solid understanding of the new features in 2.0 and the preparation to make the right design and implementation choices when the switch to 2.0 is made.

Pre-requisites: some experience building Web applications with ASP.NET 1.1

Best and Worst Patterns and Practices for C# 1.0/2.0
Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
C# isn't just a component-oriented language; it's a pattern-oriented language: Patterns of all kinds – including Design Patterns and Implementation Patterns – make up the .NET Framework. Even the simplest keywords and constructs — such as lock , foreach , and using — generate IL constructs from pre-defined templates that are customized by the compiler based on the context of their usage. A great part of day-to-day Framework development involves implementing patterns of various kinds, and identifying these patterns (a) creates a common development vocabulary that maximizes your productivity by reducing errors, and (b) makes an application easier to document, maintain, and understand. Ultimately, you can develop a vocabulary of Patterns and Practices (as well as Anti-Patterns and Anti-Practices) that let you rapidly ease through Framework development, by thinking of Patterns as the reusable building blocks that orchestrate the relationships and behaviors of the classes, modules, and assemblies you create. We'll focus on Best and Worst Patterns and Practices for creating .NET Framework applications and Components in C#. When we're finished, you'll be ready to take advantage of Whidbey-based features of C#, armed with Best Practices for C# class design.

Pre-requisites: This session is specifically designed for intermediate to advanced developers who already have experience with C# and .NET; beginners are welcome, but there'll be no handholding.

Build Distributed Object-Oriented Apps with .NET
Rocky Lhotka, Magenic Technologies
Get an in-depth look at the concepts and techniques from Lhotka's Expert VB.NET and C# Business Objects books on distributed business object programming. You'll learn how to design Windows and Web-based applications based on distributed business objects, achieving high levels of reuse, scalability, long-term maintainability, and other benefits. You will also learn how Web Services, remoting, object serialization, Enterprise Services, no-touch deployment, and other .NET technologies come together to create these applications.

Microsoft Windows Anywhere: Building and Integrating Pen and Digital Ink Capabilities into your Windows-Based Applications
Microsoft
This pre-conference workshop is tailor-made for developers who are ready to open their applications to new users and business opportunities by providing access to user data and applications anywhere. Learn about the Tablet PC, its unique form factor, and natural input devices. Experience a comprehensive and hands-on workshop focusing on the Tablet PC SDK and the new InfiNotes Ink-based note-taking framework. This full-day course contains a broad overview of the Tablet PC SDK and its object model and covers the primary objects and components required to build new or integrate Tablet PC functionality into existing Windows-based applications. If you want to code along on a computer other than a Tablet PC you can, by installing the Tablet PC SDK, Windows XP Tablet PC 2005 Recognition Pack, and the beta version of the Agilix InfiNotes control onto your computer prior to the conference. For information about how to install these components on your computer, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/tabletpc.

Post-Conference Workshops, Thursday, February 10

Team-Based Development Using Team System
Brian Randell, MCW Technologies
Got team? If your team writes managed code in Visual Basic or C#, you'll want to check out the new Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System. You'll learn about the new Enterprise-level source code control features, how to track design issues, features requests, and -- yes -- bugs, with the new work item-tracking feature. You'll also learn about new testing features. Discover how the new SOA and Class designers help you design and write better solutions. In addition, we'll show you the new project tracking features and how they can be used to keep your solution on target. Naturally, this product is still in beta form, so we'll also talk about the options you have today from both Microsoft and the community to do tasks such as source code control, unit testing, and project management.

.NET Data Access: Soup to Nuts
Andrew Brust and Brian Schmitt, Citigate Hudson
We'll cover the basics and fine points of ADO .NET, seen from both Windows Forms and ASP.NET vantage points. After a brief introduction, we'll cover connected and disconnected data access, ADO .NET data binding, strongly typed DataSets, and the XML features of ADO.NET. Then we'll take a close look at using ADO .NET and SQL Server together, including development of stored procedures, triggers, and functions; advanced T-SQL techniques; and working with SQL Server and COM+ transactions. Attendees will also get a high-level look at the forthcoming features of "Yukon," the watershed next release of SQL Server.

.NET To The Core™: Designing and Implementing High Performance ASP.NET Solutions
Doug Seven, Atomic Consulting; Russ Nemhauser, Nemhauser Media
Cut to the core of proper design techniques, caching, and stress testing to create reliable, scalable, high-performance Web sites. We'll start by investigating application design considerations and alternatives, such as XML Web Services vs. DataSets, or two-tier vs. n-tier architecture. With our findings in mind, you'll look at some basic and advanced caching techniques in ASP.NET (both v.1.x and v.2.0), including per-request, database cache invalidation, and custom cache dependencies. Additionally, with the aid of Microsoft Web Application Center Test, Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool, and the new testing functionality offered in Visual Studio Team System, you'll be able to measure the improvement in performance and calculate the potential savings in hardware. If you develop Web applications, you need to be here.

Optimizing Server-Side Processing in SQL Server: Transactions, Recovery, Logging, and Locking
Kimberly Tripp, SYSolutions, Inc.
Transactions are at the core of any system's performance — improperly written transactions can cause the transaction log to fill, blocking to occur, and lead to overall performance/recovery problems. Understanding how transactions work, how to control transaction mode, lock granularity, and duration, as well as how logging works can ensure effective recovery strategies as well as better performance. Stored Procedures and procedural code (especially with regard to how you control transactions) is incredibly important to overall system scalability. We will cover the anatomy of a transaction — with emphasis on locking and logging, granularity, and duration of locks, isolation levels, transaction modes, transaction nesting, marked transactions, locks due to compile blocks, compilation issues (ad-hoc, procedural and sp_executesql), and more. Additionally, we will talk about features and changes to look forward to in SQL Server 2005.

Microsoft Windows Anywhere: Wrapping It All Up -- How Do I Prepare for Mobile PC Application Development and Extreme Tablet PC Development ?
Microsoft
Spend some additional time delving further into Tablet PC functionality and get more detailed experience with what's coming for developers of mobile applications. The session will summarize what we learned the last few days at Windows Anywhere and make sure you are on track to build and deliver awesome Mobile PC applications that take advantage of the Tablet PC pen and ink functionality. The morning will focus on an advanced technical discussion of the Tablet PC SDK, where you'll hear about tips and tricks of Tablet PC development that will enable you to build advanced applications perfectly suited to Tablet PC user scenarios. The second half of the day will put into perspective the development landscape for Mobile PC applications, walking you through the features the Mobile PC platform will expose and how you can utilize these services to build applications that can work anywhere and anytime for your customers.