JohnPapa.net

DevConnections Las Vegas - Nov 2008

John Papa — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:47:00 GMT

I'll be speaking at DevConnections in Las Vegas this Fall along with others Julie Lerman and Paul Litwin. The 3 topics I will be presenting are:

Data Access with Silverlight 2
Integrating Enterprise Library's Data Access Application Block with your Project
Practical Strategies with the Entity Framework

The past few events have been awesome and getting stronger and more fun each time. If you are planning on attending the conference in the Fall, please stop by and say hi.

My upcoming book tentatively titled Data Access with Silverlight 2 should almost be available by the conference. I am targeting December, but I am hoping I can pull it off for November.

Silverlight 2 Book Cover Mock Up

John Papa — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:03:00 GMT

Here is the mock up of my upcoming Silverlight 2 book that I mentioned earlier today. The title is still up in the air, as is the cover art, and ... let's face it ... just about everything except for the release date of Nov/Dec 2008. I just wanted to see what it might look like so I mocked up a fake book cover to the amusement of myself and my daughters. Though I think they want a cat or an eagle on the cover :-)

As it Once Was, I am Writing a Book

John Papa — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:34:00 GMT

It is 3 am and I am learning the subtle balance of typing with one hand while swaying and comforting my new born child in the other. She was up late crying ... a lot. She had colic. So we took turns staying up with her to comfort her. The problem was I also had a book to finish.

It has been years since I last wrote any part of a book. I authored or co-authored 8 books on cool topics including SQL Server, ADO, and XML back in the late 90's and early 2000's. Then something happened ... something wonderful. 3 times. I had a child, and another, and another. Suddenly the massive amounts of time I was dedicating to writing books morphed into a blissful parenting experience. I still enjoyed writing so I hit the articles hard writing more than 70 articles over the past 7 years and I spoke at several conferences.

My kids aren't full grown but I've recently had an urge to get a book out. I've been deep into the new data access technologies since they were announced. I've been working hard at making practical Silverlight 2 applications that are more about how to implement Silverlight 2 in line of business applications as opposed to just making pretty circles bounce on a screen (though that is cool too). A few weeks later my book idea is refined and on its way to being written and on the shelves. I expect it to be out in November of this year.

I expect my next few months are now going to be full of work, writing a book and family time ... basically eliminating all sleep. Just like it used to be. At least this time I can use 2 hands to type.

Entity Framework & LINQ Tonight in Sarasota

John Papa — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:28:00 GMT

Tonight I will be joining the Sarasota SQL Server User group and the Sarasota .NET User group at their combined May 2008 meeting. I will be presenting the Entity Framework and LINQ using the new bits that came out 2 days ago on Monday including the new features that it brings. I always have a good time at user groups and especially so when its a hot topic like the Entity Framework and LINQ.

I'll be showing several demonstrations using the Entity Framework that demonstrate how to use it in different scenarios and its future direction. I'm looking forward it!

Here is the logistical information for tonight's event and Here is link to a google map for directions.

5/14/2008 @ 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Welcome Time:
5/14/2008 5:45 PM Eastern Time

Location:

The Community Foundation of Sarasota County

2635 Fruitville Road

Sarasota, FL 34237

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP 1 Beta Download

John Papa — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:24:00 GMT

Soma announced this morning that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP 1 is now ready and can be downloaded. This includes several updates, includes support for SQL Server 2008, and has a few new products including the Entity Framework, LINQ to Entities and ADO.NET Data Services (aka Astoria). ScottGu posted some notes regarding what's included in the service pack, as well.

Of course all of this is released 2 days before I have a demonstration on the Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities on Wednesday to the Sarasota .NET and SQL Server User groups. So I have a few modifications to make for my presentations.

I received an error when I first tried to install it. The problem was that the service pack was in conflict with Silverlight Tools Beta for Visual Studio 2008 which I was using to create/edit Silverlight 2 applications. Once uninstalling this i was able to get the service pack to install properly. Scott Gu's post discusses this issue as well as the importance of making sure you install Vista SP 1 first.

Check out ScottGu's post for full details.

.NET Development with the Wiimote

John Papa — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:57:00 GMT

My friend and colleague Brian Peek has been developing some awesome and fun applications for a while. As a contributing author to MSDN's Coding 4 Fun Bran has been creating some cool applications that you should really check out at his site at www.brianpeek.com.

Not his latest, but certainly one of his most famous, achievement is his Wiimote .NET Library and the uses that he is putting it to. Brian got the attention of Newsweek magazine for the Wiimote .NET library that he authored. They interviewed him and the article can be found on line at http://www.newsweek.com/id/136381. The print article should be in the May 19th issue of the International Edition of Newsweek.

Silverlight, WCF and LINQ to SQL

John Papa — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:20:00 GMT

I've had some requests lately to write some articles that work with LINQ to SQL. I've ben focusing on the Entity Framework a lot due to its vast nature and that fact that its still relatively unknown to many people. So I am going to work on a LINQ to SQL project that ties into a multi tier model. I am also going to show how this can be hooked into a Silverlight 2 UI that connects through WCF to the lower layers.

I'll probably be demonstrating these first at an event I am trying to set up with Joe Healy of Microsoft in Tampa this coming August. The demos will be ready way before then, but I wanted to have some cool materials for this event. There is no title nor date yet, but once the event is set I will be sure to let blog about it. It should be a great day overall.

I also plan on giving some love to the Entity Framework, regular persistence/mapper models, MVP patterns and more. I just have to find a way to work it all in and still give enough to each topic. Of course, this means all demos are subject to change, but the content will be fresh and cool for certain.

Here is a very poorly and quickly thrown together diagram of one of the demos I am tweaking.

Feeling Blue

John Papa — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:24:00 GMT

Today I decided to try out a new theme for my site. Rich Mercer has a handful of nice themes posted in his site including this one, which is a variation of the Point Space Blue theme. I'm going to try it out and see where it takes me. Its a pretty clean theme though there are a few items I need to touch up for certain. Hey if anything, my daughter likes this one the best so far.

I have been thrilled with the flexibility and the low maintenance of Graffiti CMS. I spend so much less time fixing problems than I used to with other products that I will leave unnamed.

Silverlight and Baseball

John Papa — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:52:00 GMT

Being a huge Yankees fan and living out of market like I do I recently purchased the MLB.com TV package so I can watch the games on the Internet. They sued to use Real video streaming however I cranked up the video tonight and noticed some changes form last year. After a quick check, yep, its using Silverlight! I'm sure this was announced somewhere along the way and I just purely missed it. But how cool is it that MLB.com is using Silverlight!

Yes, I spray painted some logos in the image :) to protect, well, myself!

Notice the media controls at the bottom of the video. These appear when you hover over the video.

Entity Framework Q&A - Lazy Loading, ObjectContext, and LINQ

John Papa — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:40:00 GMT

I've received hundreds of questions regarding the Entity Framework and LINQ. Obviously developers are very interested in the Entity Framework and its data access and modeling implications.

I responded to some of the most frequently asked questions in the May 2008 Data Points column. Topic includes:

Why use Entity SQL when I can use LINQ to get to entities?
What is the role of ObjectContext?
How do explicit and eager loading work LINQ and the Entity Framework?
How do I see the SQL that will execute?
What can I do with complex types?
How do I create a complex type?

You can find my Data Points column in the May 2008 MSDN Magazine issue online.