Last year I gave a number of presentations on ADO.NET Data Services (formerly Astoria). This year The Next Generation User Group seem very interested in this subject. I gave this presentation at Coventry last Monday (28th January 2008) and I’m doing it again in Oxford tomorrow night (12th February 2008) and again in Cambridge in April (probably Tuesday 29th April). This version of the presentation has been updated for the December CTP and you can download the slides here. Here’s the abstract for the presentation:-

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has brought new opportunities and caused us to solve old problems in new ways. AJAX and Silverlight applications need read/write access to data and business objects without performing full page refreshes and without dumbing down the data so much we are just left with primitives. Microsoft’s answer to this problem is ADO.NET Data Services. In short ADO.NET Data Services is a data access layer for client-side technologies such as AJAX and Silverlight. This session shows how it works, how you can write ADO.NET Data Services data servers and how you can customize ADO.NET Data Services to your applications requirements.

Technorati Tags: ADO.NET Data Services, Astoria, NxtGen

If you’ve never been to a user group before but wondered whether this is something you should be interested in then check out the video of The .NET Developer Network on the top right hand side of the front page:-

The 3 mins 30 seconds video has been crafted by Chris Myhill, co-organiser of The .NET Developer Network, from over 3 hours of footage taken at meetings towards the end of 2007 (it takes an enormous amount of time to whittle 3 hours down to about 3 minutes). Sincere thanks to Chris and also to Mike Doherty and Martyn Fewtrell (regular members of the group) who explain what the group means to them. Also honourable mentions to the speakers included in the video: Oliver Sturm, Dave Bonner, David Ringsell and Pete McGann. Finally, special thanks go to one Richard Costall of The Next Generation User Group who can be seen almost at the very beginning of the video in the bottom left hand corner shouting with as much enthusiasm as anyone "DotNetDevNet!".

Technorati Tags: The .NET Developer Network, DotNetDevNet, Chris Myhill, Mike Doherty, Martyn Fewtrell, Oliver Sturm, Dave Bonner, David Ringsell, Pete McGann, Richard Costall

My first MSDN Magazine article entitled "Around the World with ASP.NET AJAX Applications" has been published in the January 2008 issue. The article is all about how to localize and globalize ASP.NET AJAX applications. The article also explains how the assembly-based localization model works and you can download the Script Resource Viewer utility that I wrote to diagnose this behavior here. You can also download the slides that accompany the presentation I have given on Internationalizing ASP.NET AJAX here.

Technorati Tags: Internationalizing ASP.NET AJAX, Internationalization, Localization, Globalization, ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, MSDN Magazine

Great news! If you’ve ever picked up a copy of the Developer Highway Code by Paul Maher, a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft UK, you’ll be delighted to know that he’s updated it and you can download it now at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/aa473878.aspx. You can also enter a competition there (just by downloading the guide) to win one of 20 copies of Windows Vista Ultimate. Alternatively the guide is being printed so if you can hang on until January 2008 you should be able to pick up a paper copy at an event somewhere. Congrats to Paul for maintaining such a high standard and to Microsoft for giving away this valuable resource.

Technorati Tags: Developer Highway Code, Paul Maher, UK Application Security

Yesterday (Monday 10th December 2007) the December CTP of ADO.NET Data Services (the new name for Microsoft Codename "Astoria") was released. This is considered to be the first CTP of this product on the grounds that the May 2007 CTP and the September 2007 CTP were based on a prototype and this new CTP is based on production code. There are many new features but of immediate importance is the fact that this release works with the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 3 and the RTM of Visual Studio 2008.

Technorati Tags: ADO.NET Data Services, Astoria, ADO.NET Entity Framework

If you went to DDD6 last month please take a moment to fill out the feedback form at http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/feedback.asp. The feedback is very useful to us and your comments affect future DDDs and the direction they take.

Thanks.

Technorati Tags: DDD, DDD6

Beta 3 of the ADO.NET Entity Framework was released on Wednesday. Apart from a whole bunch of fixes and enhancements this is the first release that will install with the RTM of Visual Studio 2008 (without hacking the install file). Naturally as the ADO.NET Entity Framework is a pre-requisite for Astoria we had to get this one soon. The December CTP of Astoria is expected shortly.

In addition yesterday Microsoft announced that a whole host of providers for the ADO.NET Entity Framework will be released within 3 months of the ADO.NET Entity Framework’s release. The list includes Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, DB2, IDS, Informix, Sybase, Ingres, Progress and VistaDB. This will certainly increase the desirability of this technology.

Technorati Tags: ADO.NET Entity Framework, Astoria

The videos of all of the sessions in Chicago 1 at DDD6 last month are now available from free download online at http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/slides.asp. The list includes Oliver Sturm’s two parter "Business Apps With WPF - The Full Monty", Chris Hay’s "Introduction To Silverlight 1.1" and "Stop Showing Me Silverlight and Build Something Damnit" and James Winters "How To Write a FaceBook app".

Technorati Tags: DDD6, Oliver Sturm, Chris Hay, James Winters

PDC 2008 will be held between 27th and 30th October 2008. PDC is a major event which always generates lots of excitement and fever and provides an insight into future Microsoft technologies.

Technorati Tags: PDC, PDC08, PDC2008

Ian Cooper, Alan Dean, Robert Grigg and Ben Hall are organising ALT.NET.UK (http://www.altnetuk.com) on Friday/Saturday 1st/2nd February 2008 in London. This is a different kind of event that has gained popularity in the US and they are trying it out here. The website says about the conference:-

Whoever shows up is the right group. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it’s over, it’s over. An Open Space conference’s agenda is decided upon by the conference participants during the opening of the event.

You can learn more about the ethos here:-

• http://blog.benhall.me.uk/2007/12/altnetuk-conference-1st2nd-february.html
• http://laribee.com/blog/2007/04/10/altnet

Technorati Tags: ALT.NET.UK, Ian Cooper, Alan Dean, Robert Grigg, Ben Hall