If you are wanting to play an active (or passive) role in the Boise Code Camp, please visit www.boisecodecamp.org to stay in tune with the happenings.

At this point, we have a location (University of Phoenix in Meridian), but not yet a date. We're choosing between the weekends of March 4th, 11th, and 18th.

I'll continue to blog more information as it becomes available.

 

I just received my letter from Microsoft welcoming me back to the Microsoft Regional Director program for the 2006-2007 period. Thought I'd share.

If your domain includes working with Microsoft connected systems (BizTalk, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc.) then you should be aware of this user group.

The UG covers the greater Seattle area, but you can stay engaged through their Website.

Yep, it's true.

Clemens Vasters, the .NET architect guru and co-founder of newtelligence AG from Germany is joining Microsoft.

Microsoft has published a Web page (actually a KB article) for any comments, corrections, or errata on my book. Nothing there yet!

I've been meaning to post this for some time. I was watching Ocean's Twelve awhile back, and really enjoyed the scene towards the end where Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon), Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle), and Turk Malloy (Scott Caan) are going over ideas on how to steal the Faberge egg in Rome. This is just after most of the twelve got arrested or detained while trying their primary plan.

The ideas and names they came up with are like Design Patterns for thieves or con artists. You can check out the script yourself, but here's a list of the design patterns (and their responses) from the original Gang of Twelve! (GOT) ...

• Swinging Priest - "not enough people"
• Crazy Larry - "not enough people"
• Soft Shoulder - "soft shoulder?"
• Baker's Dozen - "No woman and not enough people"
• Hell in a Handbasket - "we can't train a cat that quickly and not enough people"
• Lookie Loo with a Bundle of Joy - the design pattern they choose with the help of Tess (Julia Roberts)

Both sides have had sites like this over the years, but Microsoft finally put together a comprehensive site with research, case studies, code samples, and other resources.

As reported on Jochen Seemann's blog, these tools are now available for download. Now the world can get started creating Domain Specific Language Widgets!

Check out our article on Data Mining in the October issue of Business IQ Magazine. You'll need to download the October issue and read it for yourself! It's about 5mb.

I was asked this again last week, so it's time to blog!

When installing SQL Server 2005, you need to click the Advanced button to get to the screen below so that you can include the sample databases and project code. If you just check the boxes for the various database services, these won't get installed by default.

Since it's a holiday and I'm posting fun links today ...

Take a moment and watch this beer commercial. It's hilarious.

This is a pretty funny video. Enjoy!

(The servers have been pretty busy lately. Hopefully you can get through)

I enjoyed very much visiting your country, meeting you, and presenting my favorite developer topics on SQL Server 2005.

• Feel free to download the demos here and the slides here.

Also, please send me any questions you might have to the email that I provided you during the conference, or post them here (as a comment).

I'm proud to be one of the folks acknowledged for making Visual Studio 2005 the thing of beauty that it is.

Congratulations to all recipients!

Here's a good resource on MSDN for troubleshooting ClickOnce deployments.

I've been hearing that there's been some issues with ClickOnce and RTM.

Say it isn't so! According to this article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, stock might be slim and lines might be long.

Ironically, one of the first questions I was asked in Dubai at the SQL Server 2005 launch event was "What day will the XBOX 360 launch in Dubai?".

Update 25 Nov - If the hyperlink above isn't working, try http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10092388

We've been getting some questions lately on this, and here are the answers:

• Partners at the Certified Partner level will receive the new Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription.  As before, this will include 5 MSDN licenses.

• Partners at the Gold Certified Partner level will receive the enhanced version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers with MSDN Premium Subscription. As before, this will include 10 MSDN licenses.

Notice that neither level include Architect or Test editions, nor do they include Team Suite. Read Ajay's post for more information.

My apologies for being late on uploading these, but I had to spend an incredible weekend touring Jerusalem and Bethlahem. Then, I jumped on a flight to Dubai, and am currently in a hotel in downtown, preparing for the SQL Server Magazine Roadshow tomorrow.

My sample code from my Keynote, Asynchronicity, Security, SMO, and Mobile presentations, as well as the afternoon of the SQLCLR seminar is in the process of being uploaded. I should have a link in a day or two. Please email me if you need something before then!

Thanks again for attending my sessions. I really enjoyed visiting your country, meeting you, and helping launch SQL Server 2005!

Update (23 Nov) - I haven't found the official site for the slides and demo code, so I've uploaded them here.

In two recent articles, in eWeek and SearchVB.com, it seems that Ivar Jacobson (one of the fathers of UML and RUP) has recently joined the Microsoft VSIP program. He is working on the Essential Unified Process (Essential UP) that is going to be integrated into Visual Studio 2005. Essential UP will be a more agile and lightweight development process based on good practices and principles of both MSF and RUP.

Thanks to a student, Jim Munn, for originally asking the question "When adding a property to an object that uses System.Collections.Generic.List<> the designer doesn't show a relation to the class that the generic collection is typed to. Why not?"

So, let's assume you have two classes: Customer and Order

Notice how, by default, the association is not displayed between the Customer and Order class. By right-clicking either the mOrders field or Orders property and selecting Show as Collection Association, the association will be visualized:

Thanks to one of my favorite attendees, Oren Ellenbogen, who is a CodeSmith guru, for providing a CodeSmith solution to my SQL Server concordance generator that I demonstrated at SQL Week in Israel.

A "concordance generator" is something I came up with, which scans through all of the columns, in all of the tables, in a database, and looks for anomalies, such as two columns with the same name, but with different data types, sizes, nullability, etc. It's good for people who like their database structures just so -- like Monk!

Check out this guy's page. For a small fee, he'll "sell" you the information on how to get all of those benefits. What people don't realize is that this is just the ISV Empower program, and you can go directly to Microsoft for this, if you qualify.

For an additionaly laugh, check out his feedback comments - some suckers and some informed folks.

Hope I saved you the finder's fee!

Check out the ASP.NET Podcast site. This is a podcast geared towards the Microsoft .NET Framework and ASP.NET development. The blog is setup for new content and includes an image gallery which lists photos of the listeners.

Thank you everyone for attending my talks. I'm going to start answering the questions I've been asked here. Feel free to email me if you have additional questions, or if my answer(s) aren't clear.

Q. Can I convert .RDLC (ReportViewer control) files to .RDL (Reporting Services) files?
A. You bet. Check out this page for more information.

Q. How can I clear out all the connection pools from my middle-tier
A. ADO.NET 2.0 has the new SqlConnection.ClearAllPools() static method.