3/21/2009

SPR301: A Day of SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data and Location-Aware Applications (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Bob Beauchemin
Support for spatial data is one of the most exciting new features in SQL Server 2008. Spatial data support is an enabling technology for an expanding type of application, the location-aware application. Specialists have been using spatial data for a long time, but the spatial data types in SQL Server make this functionality available to every application and every database programmer. In this one-day seminar, we'll cover implementing and using SQL Server 2008 spatial data, indexes, and programming location-aware applications. Some of the topics covered will be:
• Getting stated with spatial data -Using spatial data in line-of-business applications
• Why are there two spatial data types?
• The SQL Server spatial data library - static methods, instance methods and properties
• Indexing spatial data -Spatial ETL
• Acquiring and importing spatial data
• Using SQL Server spatial libraries from client and middle-tier
• Geocoding addresses
• Using SLQ Server spatial data with the Virtual Earth map control

PSH301: Developing for Windows PowerShell: The Complete Story (Bring Your Own Laptop) (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Don Jones
Ready to make your application’s management and administration accessible through Windows PowerShell? Ready to build applications that can be managed from the command-line and a GUI with practically no extra effort? Ready to make your applications part of automated business processes - including scenarios you can’t even foresee? In this in-depth workshop, you’ll see exactly how to do it all using Visual Studio and either C# or VB. You’ll see how to build Windows PowerShell cmdlets from scratch, embedding within them the business and administrative logic needed to manage your apps. You’ll learn how to leverage PowerShell’s extensible type system to expose additional information. You’ll learn to create default formatting views, help files, and other adjuncts to help IT pros manage your app more effectively. Best yet, you’ll learn about the patterns and practices that PowerShell enables for systems administrators, and come to understand exactly how administrators will use PowerShell to manage your app. Finally, you’ll learn how to leverage the cmdlets you’ve written to quickly create graphical administrative consoles that require minimal additional effort, and are largely de-coupled from the application logic (making the GUI easier to create and maintain). As a bonus, you’ll also learn how to leverage PowerShell as a sort of ".NET Immediate Window" for quickly testing and prototyping code. Your instructor, Don Jones, is a Windows PowerShell MVP, co-author of the first published book on Windows PowerShell, and a PowerShell trainer with more than three years of experience. You’ll be able to obtain all completed code templates and code samples after the session; bring your own laptop running Visual Studio (Express editions are fine) to participate in do-it-yourself and follow-along examples - you’ll leave with a complete PowerShell solution right on your laptop!

HPE301: Planning, Designing and Customizing Search Centers (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Daniel Webster
Whether you are using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Search Server 2008 or SharePoint Server 2007, effective and efficient searches will require considerable planning, designing and customization to meet the varied business needs of your users. SharePoint Server 2007 certainly makes customizations easier, but they are certainly possible in all three products. In most organizations, every business unit will have different search requirements. Achieving the goal of meeting their business needs while maintaining consistency in your search environment may seem an impossible task. It is not impossible but will require major planning before implementation.
Search is not a “build it and they will come” scenario. A successful search platform not only requires a design that meets what both you and your users think their needs are, but also requires maintenance, review, and constant tweaking in our ever-changing world. We will be working with the Infrastructure Update additions to the Search platform including Federated Search.
This topic is much too broad to be covered in six hours… maybe in six days. This workshop will get you started in the process and will send you home with an outline for action. Be prepared to completely rethink your search design, ask questions, and take copious notes.

3/22/2009

HPR401: All About SharePoint Workflows (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Robert Bogue
SharePoint Workflows are a powerful addition to the platform. From the out-of-the-box workflows that ship with WSS and MOSS to SharePoint Designer workflows to Visual Studio-developed workflows there are an array of options for adding workflow to your SharePoint solutions. In this workshop, we’ll walk you through a ground up understanding of Workflow. Starting with the out-of-the-box workflows, you’ll see how they’re used and what their limitations are. You’ll learn how users can create their own workflows with SharePoint Designer and why you need to be careful about when you let them do that. From there we’ll develop our own workflows in Visual Studio including the creation of tasks, the addition of association and instantiation forms, a task edit form, and even how to develop your own custom activity. In this jam-packed workshop, you’ll get everything you need to move from novice to expert in SharePoint workflow – all in one day. This is a highly technical session for developers who want to do workflow.

VPR301: Microsoft Technology Roadmap (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Michele Leroux Bustamante
With these rapidly changing times, developers have a lot more on their mind and on their plate than they did at any point in recent time. Although Visual Studio and the .NET Framework both provide tools that yield an overall increase in productivity during the development cycle, the avalanche of technologies that builds upon these foundations can seem overwhelming if not insurmountable at times. This workshop will take you through a guided tour of the Microsoft technologies available today, tomorrow, and into the foreseeable future...and enable educated decisions on aligning your product road map with upcoming technologies. We’ll discuss language and platform trends for .NET 2.0 through .NET 4.0 including language trends for C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0; advances for developing the data access tier from data sets and readers to ADO.NET 3.5 features including LINQ and the Entity Framework; Windows client development with WPF and the relevance of Windows Forms and ClickOnce; Web development with ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight; the evolution of communication stacks from ASMX, Remoting, and Enterprise Services to WCF, and continued enhancements to WCF; perspectives on workflow and BPM; the impact Oslo will have on the future of Microsoft development; a review of identity platforms including Cardspace, Geneva, and Zurich; and the direction of cloud computing with Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform. In this intense, one-day briefing, you will see numerous demonstrations of these technologies, you will assess the benefits and advantages of the forward trends and you will gain an overall picture of each technology’s place in your development efforts today and tomorrow—for each respective discipline. Developers, architects, and technical leads who would like to gain some perspective on the Microsoft road map, the applicability of each technology, and the choices and the trade-offs will greatly benefit from this workshop.

APR201: Silverlight 2 Development Workshop (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Dan Wahlin
Silverlight 2 provides a powerful framework for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that capture the attention of end users. In this workshop, Dan Wahlin (author of Professional Silverlight for ASP.NET Developers) will discuss Silverlight 2 technologies including language features, built-in controls, control templates, styles, networking features, animations, data binding, and more. Learn to build engaging applications using the latest client-side technology. If you’re looking to get up-to-speed quickly on Silverlight, this is a workshop you’ll want to attend.

SPR302: SQL Server 2005/2008 Indexes from Every Angle - Internals, Statistics and Fragmentation (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Paul Randal
Kimberly L. Tripp
Most people understand their table structures and even their user requirements (to a point); however, sometimes the key to optimization is in how the system chooses to store and execute the request. By understanding how SQL Server stores your data as well as how the optimizer chooses an index, you will be better equipped to create the right structures (and not over or under index) as well as keep them more optimal. This intense, full-day workshop will cover index internals (in terms of how your relational data is stored), statistics (in terms of how to provide the best information to allow your query requests to be optimized), and fragmentation (in terms of the costs and benefits of a well-managed system). If you’re a developer trying to create more scalable databases, or you’re an admin trying to tune an existing system, and you’ve always wondered why and how SQL Server works, then this workshop is for you! NOTE: The post-conference workshop has minimal to no overlap with this pre-conference workshop. In fact, these two workshops go very well together and provide a more comprehensive approach to performance tuning.

Post-Conference

3/26/2009

APRS201: Building an ASP.NET MVC Application from Start to Finish (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Stephen Walther
In this full-day workshop, Stephen Walther introduces you to the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework by building an entire ASP.NET MVC application from start to finish. If you are new to the ASP.NET Framework then this session is a great introduction to ASP.NET MVC. During this session, you learn how to take advantage of test-driven development when building an ASP.NET MVC application. You also learn how to take advantage of formal software design principles and patterns to build software that can survive the test of time.

HPS301: Building MOSS Publishing Sites (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Doug Ware
When Microsoft added Web Content Management features to SharePoint, they really created something special. Out of the box, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server includes two publishing portal definitions that you can use to create your own publishing sites, but the real power comes from taking the SharePoint features that the built-in site definitions use and incorporating them into your own custom branded publishing sites.
This workshop starts with an overview of SharePoint publishing from the perspective of an end-user. From there it takes you under the covers and deconstructs the base feature set to show you how to leverage the individual pieces and create your own sites. Along the way, you will learn how the features support branding, how to customize the authoring experience, and how (and more importantly where) to deploy your site’s assets.
By the time you complete this workshop you will understand how to implement sites that face the Internet with a branded look and feel so that your visitors will never know they are looking at a SharePoint site and you’ll also understand how to configure the same site to support the creators and managers of content in your organization.
You will learn:
• How to create a publishing site and pages
• How to configure the publishing infrastructure
• To leverage master pages and style sheets using the publishing features
• How to create publishing site definitions
• How to separate content and layout with content types and page layouts
• How to incorporate SharePoint Designer branding assets into Visual Studio solutions

VPS301: Service-Orientation, WCF and You (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
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 for you, 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 substantiate 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.

SPS303: SQL Server 2005/2008 Indexes from Every Angle - Are Your Indexing Strategies Working? (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)
Add'l Fee $399
Paul Randal
Kimberly L. Tripp
Based on a former (and very popular) session of only 75 minutes, this full-day workshop expands the many topics related to whether or not you’ve indexed properly. This intense workshop dives deeply into assessing your current indexing strategies as well as provides solutions for improving performance based on your existing workload. This seminar focuses on three primary steps: remove/prune any unused indexes before doing anything else; verify the health of the existing (and useful) indexes; add additional/missing indexes to improve poorly performing queries/workloads; and exceptions to understand/consider. We will look at DMVs, Performance Dashboard (SQL Server 2005 SP2), Performance Data Collection (SQL Server 2008), Extended Events, and many aspects of workload analysis. If you’re a developer who is performing workload tests or an administrator/operator trying to tune an existing system, then this workshop is for you! NOTE: The pre-conference workshop is not required to attend this post-conference workshop, however, there’s also minimal to no overlap. These two workshops go very well together and provide a more comprehensive approach to performance tuning.