It’s no secret that PDC will be where Microsoft announces their Microsoft cloud computing platform. But if you are like me you have heard that term abused throughout the industry. News on Microsoft's cloud computing platform as a back end for Silverlight applications will be some of the things I hope to key on throughout PDC. I wont be making the trip myself but have plenty of friends that are going.

Here is an interesting note I found on Bill Reiss blog that breaks down the PDC agenda for us: (http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/post/PDC-should-be-renamed-CDC-for-Cloud-Developers-Conference.aspx)

There are a couple of more Silverlight sessions, now with a total of 13, but what really struck me is that the category with the most sessions is Cloud Services, with 33. Windows 7 has 22, which is still a lot, but 33 is just incredible.

Microsoft’s platform has a collection of unannounced services that I’m sure will all come to light during the PDC keynote. Shortly thereafter I have no doubt someone will have these all listed out very nicely(more to come)!! 

Here are some links of some of the services if your looking to understand how and where Red Dog, Zurich, BizTalk Services and SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) all fit together, David Chappell’s White paper on  “A short introduction to cloud platforms: An Enterprise-Oriented View.”.  Is worth a look he does not mention Zurich & SSDS by name but there are details to help fill in the holes.

For those of you NOT wanting to dig into the 13 pages Mary-Jo Foley from ZDNET.com provides the cliff notes to Chappell’s white paper. Another nice link and picture provided from Mike Kavis – “The future is in the clouds”.

I woke up early this morning to start my exploration into this release and have already found people that could articulate this event much better than me…. So I have included links for the blogs I found most informative. I hope to have more information out this week walking through some of the guts of Silverlight 2. Hope you enjoy.

Check out a couple of these blogs to get a well rounded vibe on what's going on!

• http://wildermuth.com/2008/10/13/Silverlight_2_Released!
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Silverlight2IsOut.aspx
• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/10/14/silverlight-2-released.aspx

If you would like the cliff notes for environment setup here it is:

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1 required
• Blend 2.5 has officially gone away and is to be replaced by Blend 2.0 SP1 
• http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/default.aspx

Honorable mention of things I didn't expect was a set of controls from Shawn Burk’s team (going to try to blog a follow up walking through these):

Shawn says: “We are currently working on a set of controls for a preview release at PDC 2008 in late October.”

• DockPanel
• WrapPanel
• ViewBox
• Label
• HeaderedContentControl
• Expander
• TreeView
• NumericUpDown
• AutoComplete
• Accordion 
  
  
  **All of these controls will use the new Visual State Manager templating model and be fully customizable in XAML by hand or through Expression Blend.  They will also ship with full, buildable source, unit tests, and an updated unit testing harness nicely wrapped up with a tasty OSI-Approved MS-PL license.

Happy researching, I know I will!!

-Jeremy

Bringing community leaders together

NWA very own Jay smith has started up a new site for helping community leaders be better assets to their community :) .. Don't take my word for it go to the site and check out the details.

Thanks,
Jeremy

IMPORTANT MEETING NOTICE!

Our September meeting, originally
scheduled for Wednesday, September 10th
has been rescheduled to
Wednesday, September 17th!

Some great discussions in the FishBowl on TDD & BDD .. Then moved over to Inversion of control jump start and ended on advanced javascript & CSS session. Both of which were given by Ben Scheiman a Principle Consultant with Sogeti, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. (@subdigital)

BLOG: http://flux88.com/

About: http://www.flux88.com/AboutMe.aspx

laptop running out of juice notes will have to be inserted later.

John Teague talks about a business problem at his company Callaway golf that he ultimately solved with jQuery.

Notes:
--jQuery can be compressed to 12KB
--Easy to manipulate DOM
--TIP&TRICK: Essentially recommends combining your JavaScript files into one.
--Big fan of FireBug

Sites:

• www.VisualjQuery.com
• http://www.callawaygolf.com/Global/en-US/Products/Clubs/Drivers.html

Prescriptive Data Access in .NET 3.5
Brian Orrell

Description: Review the "right way" to develop data access and management applications using VS2008 and LINQ. Many things have changed with LINQ to SQL many developers have difficulty separating the hype from the real-world applicability of these new technologies.

BIO: Pariveda Solutions , Vice President
Brian Orrell is a Vice President with Pariveda Solutions. He has over fifteen years of technology consulting experience in a variety of industries and technologies. His emphasis is on the delivery of enterprise solutions utilizing Microsoft .NET. His areas of expertise include designing, developing and maintaining web-based and distributed object systems. Mr. Orrell has led large-scale development engagements for large utility companies, airlines, shipping companies, educational and non-profit organizations.

Notes:

• Do you check data during the time your user pulls it changes it and hits save???

I bounced around a little focusing on three sessions.

• Building Applications with Dynamic data
  Jason Kergosien
• Coding for Stupid Useres
  Gordon Montgomery
• Programming Microsoft Business Rules Engine
  Rick Garibay

These were all nice sessions. Notes will be Com'n

Attention User Group Leaders, INETA Volunteers, and Speakers! INETA would like to invite you to join us for a Mini-Summit on Monday June 2nd, 2008 at the Orlando Convention Center. We're going to be holding a somewhat informal gathering from 3-7 PM to provide user group leaders and chance to network, meet the new board members, and spend some quality time talking with us about community....

Read full article

Well we're here ... Ready to see what this place is all about.. There is a lot of Texas orange around here??? Not for sure what that is all about but I’m sporting my classic white & red Hog shirt! No funny looks as of yet wait until I break out the PIIIIIIGGG SSOOOOOOOOIIIIIIEEEEEEE on them though.

First session - [Unit Testing in Silverlight 2.0 W/ Eric Hexter](@ehexter)

BIO: AspInsider , Director Austin .NET user group, Organized 07 Austin code camp
BLOG: http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/hex/

Notes:
There are 3 DLL's inside the controls that can be used for Unit testing...Its those Dll's that make Unit testing in SilverlIght possible.

No VS2008 CTRL + R + T in Silverlight apps for Unit testing must use an add-on

Using Silverlight Test framework builds the XAP file packaged and ready for you silverlight app

**Jamie Kinsdell using Nunit with Silverlight (need to change some references web config entries.

Jeff Wilcox on Silverlight Project - project template && Item template

Code is in the Austin Code camp repository