Craig Bailey on Microsoft

Next Wednesday 29 August we’ve got a jam packed Sydney Business & Technology User Group (SBTUG) meeting all lined up.

The meeting kicks off at 6:30pm with free pizza.

Business

Kicking us off will be Steve Herzberg (http://steveherzberg.blogspot.com) from NRG Solutions (http://www.nrgsolutions.com.au/) with an detailed session on ‘Winning New Business’.

Steve is a sales and marketing guru who specialises in training SMEs and company managers. His session will outline tools and tips for company owners, software managers and senior developers to increase their effectiveness at winning new business.

Steve has more details about his session here (http://steveherzberg.blogspot.com/2007/08/winning-new-business.html).

Technology

For our technology session, SharePoint expert Deon Taylor (http://sharemypoint.blogspot.com/) from SDM (http://www.sdm.com.au/Pages/home.aspx) will be going through Enterprise Search and its implementation within the company perimeter. Enterprise Search is an extremely important business requirement these days, so this session will be invaluable to people investigating the different options available. Deon has details of his session here (http://sharemypoint.blogspot.com/2007/08/enterprise-seo-sharepoint-search.html).

SBTUG on Facebook

Perhaps you’ve avoided Facebook so far (it can be a time waster, that’s for sure).

However, if you are on Facebook I invite you to join the SBTUG group (and also the SBTUG Events).

The benefits of the Facebook group are that we can easily stay in touch, post comments and notices, as well as sign up for events and RSVP to events (which will help me with catering).

To join simply visit this page (you’ll need to log in for all these links) and click on the ‘Join Group’ link:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5695001142

To add the SBTUG 29 August Event, go to this page and click on the ‘Add to my Events’ link:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5058354417

Please use the RSVP link to let me know if you’ll be attending.

If you’d like to add me as your friend, please go to my profile and click ‘Add Craig as a Friend’:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=650760158

Prizes

I’ve got some great SBTUG T-Shirts, so as a special incentive to join me on Facebook, I’ll be giving a T-Shirt to the first 10 people who join the SBTUG group on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5695001142

(You’ll need to attend an SBTUG meeting to pick up your prize.)

Looking forward to seeing you this coming Wednesday 29 August 2007 at 6:30pm.

More details on the meeting at the SBTUG web site: www.sbtug.com

Address is:

Microsoft Sydney Office
Theatre 2
1 Epping Road
North Ryde NSW 2113

I've written an article outlining How to use SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS) to import Visual FoxPro data into SQL Server.

The article is reasonably basic and covers:

• Using SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio to create the package and manage errors
• Using SQL Server Management Studio to create the Integration Service
• Using SQL Agent job to schedule it
• Gotchas (including UNC mapping, and the VFP OLE DB driver)
• Brief overview of a real world implementation using SSIS
• Brief discussion of SSIS versus VFP Upsizing Wizard

The article is 49 pages long, but don't be alarmed, most of it is screen shots. It is available in Word or PDF format. I've included the Word format in case you want to edit the article, add your own comments, copy stuff out etc.

It is available here (and from my Articles page).

Not wanting to pick on anyone in particular, but I've heard the expression "it's not rocket science" all week at TechEd, usually in the context of how easy it is now (as compared to previous versions of products) to build wonderful, enabling, awe-inspiring solutions to enterprise problems.

I have to admit I wasn't exactly sure what rocket science was, but thankfully Wikipedia came to the clarification party yet again:

Rocket science is an informal term for aerospace engineering especially as it concerns craft which operate in outer space.

Due to the complexity and depth of this area of engineering (requiring mastery in subjects including mechanics (fluid mechanics, orbital mechanics, flight dynamics), mathematics, control engineering, materials science, aeroelasticity, avionics, reliability engineering, noise control and flight test), it is also informally used as a term to describe an endeavor requiring great intelligence or technical ability.

Whilst the tools are certainly getting better, I have to say that enterprise development is getting more and more like rocket science, with a complete range of specialists required on most large developments these days...

Is it just me that thinks this?

I've held off talking about the TechEd keynote from Wednesday (because it was extremely disappointing), but thankfully the locknote was slightly (but only slightly) better.

It was good because it was a chance for us developers to say goodbye to Frank Arrigo (he's heading over to Redmond). Frank has had an amazing impact on the developer community (and to a small extent the IT Pro community) in Australia. He is much loved, and we'll miss him.

Apart from that we were dragged through a mildly interesting insight into the AFP (which really only served to confirm my thoughts from the earlier Computer Forensics session).

Why attend the locknote?
Answer: We'll miss you Frank.

I popped into the end of a session delivered by some of the AFP (Australian Federal Police) Computer Forensic experts. The surprising discovery for me was how under-resourced they are. Sure, they know how to recover data 'deleted' from a hard drive, and they also get pretty good at finding incriminating stuff, but overall my impression was that these guys rely on a lot of luck.

Quickly banishing visions of NCIS-like teams that were the uber-crime-sleuth I'd wanted to be when I was younger, these guys are just hard working blokes (no women apparently) who often get called into really disgusting crime scenes (drug user's premises with discarded syringes etc), and can find themselves at the end of their 24 hour search warrant with nothing to show for it.

I had hoped I would come out really scared about how powerful and technologically innovative this crack team were - but no, they are just coping (like computer crime agencies world wide no doubt).

Why Computer Forensics?
Answer: Because it is better than nothing at all...
Note: The AFP is looking for more recruits - they are in dire need.

More out of interest than any compelling business need I dropped into Neil Roodyn's session on Vista Gadgets.

And I have to say I found it quite thought provoking. Neil went through some simple examples but most importantly stressed some of the design considerations to be employed. Designing for Offline (or worse, unexpected disconnection scenarios) from the outset is the most important of course, but then issues of having initial data in the install were covered.

His session had examples including Bus timetable, Routing (via Virtual Earth) and Recipe gadgets.

Neil finished with a few directives summarised as:

• Build gadgets to work offline
• Utilise more opportunities (Vista will be on up to 1 billion desktops one day...)
• Decide which functionality option is correct for the circumstance (eg having huge offline caches can lead to performance issues

However, my main takeaway, and answer to the question of Why is as follows:

Why Vista Gadgets?
Answer: To complement existing applications

Why SharePoint Branding?
Answer: Because we can. Finally.

Yes, the customization 'features' of SharePoint have been well criticised for a while, so it is good to see that branding and formatting is now a simple combination of master page changes and CSS.

Not that it is trivial, but as Kathy Hughes covered (extremely well I might add) in her session, it is very straight forward once you know how. Getting your head around the Content database and how pages are constructed with Page layouts, Content placeholders and web parts is a little confusing at first, but soon starts making sense.
Themes are also supported, but I had to leave the session before we got to this part (a pity).

The customization tools are spread across SharePoint Designer, Visual Studio and also in browser changes.
The session covered the basic steps of Design, Coding and then Cascading down through sites.

So, to repeat my earlier answer to Why SharePoint branding...
Answer: Because we can, and we can do it reasonably easily now.

I've been a little behind on my blog reading of late, so here's a quick list of links I've enjoyed (many of which you no doubt read weeks ago :-)

• Vienna will support 32-bit: Even longer life for FoxPro applications
• Another great new site for learning FoxPro (for free!)
• Embed II - The Smart VFP Treeview Class
• One month until FoxForward 2007!
• Visual Foxpro Autocomplete - Tips and Tricks
• Here comes a new control... ZoomNavBar!
• Hosting the .NET Runtime inside of Visual FoxPro
• Executing VB.NET and C# Code in Visual FoxPro
• 5 Ways to Automate Development in FoxPro

What an awesome end to the day. I'm already sold on the whole Silverlight concept, but this session was an eye opener. Joe Stegman impressed, with a slickly crafted presentation, perfectly delivered. No woffle or hype, just demo after demo of Silverlight goodness.
Part of the attraction of Silverlight is how it opens up the programming of media and interaction via Visual Studio (admittedly mostly in v1.1 which 'aint out for a while yet). But in 1.0 (due for RTM in a month or so) there is plenty to appreciate. The graphics rendering on this is incredibly smooth and fast. A demo with 9 separate video streams was pushing (only!) 50% CPU on his notebook.

Joe covered the various toolsets - this was the first time I'd seen Expression Blend demoed in a compelling way (it's actually a really nice product), but the standout was Expression Media Encoder which was packed with features (it even has a command line extension for batching media conversions.

Why Silverlight?

• Broad reach (his words) which means they are ultimately aiming for it to run on everything (but initially this is just Windows and Mac), including mobile devices
• The rich media experience is easy to achieve
• The tools are available very soon

I'd be looking at Silverlight very seriously for web sites wanting to deliver rich media. The learning curve is not that steep, and the results are incredible.

The old joke about WPF being the answer to a question that hasn't been asked is still around I guess, and thus a session on WPF is treated by some with a little bit of skepticism. Although only a mini-session, Paul Stovell did a great job of explaining why WPF is now relevant. Actually I don't really think his aim was to address relevance, but he did it none the less. With the release (finally) of tools that help build the XAML behind WPF applications, the space is becoming more and more compelling.

Paul went through the development of a calendar control in WPF and along the way offered an insight into the way of thinking through a control's design (he'll have details on his blog in the coming days no doubt).

I had to leave half way through his sessions sadly, but the few minutes I saw allowed me to answer the basic question:
Why WPF?
Answer: A newer, richer user experience; Tools are finally delivered; Graphics engine is highly performant and easy to harness.