Black-Belt Virtual Track

If you’re an experienced developer, our Black-Belt Virtual Track is aimed at your needs. It’s called Black-Belt, because we assume both programming experience and familiarity with the tools. It’s called a “virtual track”, because instead of having sessions one after another in one room, you’ll find Black-Belt sessions distributed through all our conferences.

Check out the sessions. With your Gold Passport registration you can attend them all.

VSTS for Everyone: Best Practices for the Whole Team
Martin L. Shoemaker and Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Sunday, January 29, 9 a.m. — Pre-Conference Workshop
With the release of Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio isn’t just for developers any more. It’s now a power tool that integrates with MS Office and other tools to support the work of all participants in the development process. In this tutorial, we’ll look at each major role in the development process, and we’ll see what tools are used in each role, how those tools integrate with VSTS, and how the role is carried out. And then we’ll see how the workflow capabilities in VSTS tie all of these roles together into a larger process. And finally, we’ll see how to customize the process and the tools to fit your project and your team.

In this tutorial, we will work through a sample project over the course of the day. Attendees will receive the sample project materials so
that they can work alongside the instructor, if they have machines with VSTS; but feel free to show up and participate even if you don’t have VSTS.

You’ll learn about:
·    Putting the Team in Team Systems
·    Requirements Management with VSTS
·    Task Management with VSTS
·    Modeling Your Architecture and Design

Best Practices for Testing and Debugging Managed Code with VS2005 Team System
Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Tuesday, January 31, 10:30 a.m. — ASP Live!
Testing and debugging aren’t programming: they’re separate, but complimentary skills that every programmer should grow, but often don’t. Where programming entails actively asserting your will on the software, testing simply specifies what the result of an operation should be, and that without that result, the test fails. Debugging is neither: it focuses us on what is—not on what should be. Knowing how to effectively develop and apply these skills is critical to every software developer’s future. Fortunately, Visual Studio 2005 has a plethora of new debugging features—such as Debug Visualizers—that make Debugging simpler, more straight-forward, and even elegant. And the Team System Edition now offers a built-in Testing system (based on NUnit) that lets you define Unit tests before you start programming, and re-run your tests whenever you wish. In this session, Richard will show you how to leverage the maximum results when testing and debugging Managed Code.

Customizing Visual Studio 2005
Deborah Kurata, InStep Technologies
Tuesday, January 31, 11:45 a.m. — ASP Live!
You have your own style, your own coding standards. Visual Studio 2003 provides features to allow you to tailor your development environment to your style - and now with Visual Studio 2005 you have even more features for customization. With improved item templates, snippets, options, and code analysis - you can have it your way. This session demonstrates how to create item templates so every form, class, or other item added to a project follows your conventions. It covers how to build code snippets and how to set up code analysis to check code against your desired standards. And you can share many of these customizations with others to help your entire team build consistent and effective software.

Five Management Essentials: Estimating, Scheduling, Planning, Tracking, and Correcting with VSTS
Martin L. Shoemaker, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Tuesday, January 31, 3:15 p.m. — ASP Live!
Does your project use VB.NET or C#? Chances are, your customers don’t know and don’t care. Will your project be on time or late? Now that they care about! How much will it cost? When will it be done? These questions can be more trouble than the technology or languages you use; and they can also be the most important questions for your executives and your customers. This session will show team leads and team members how VSTS helps them in the three key resource management activities: estimating time and costs; planning and scheduling the effort; and tracking, reporting, and correcting as the project runs. Along the way, we’ll discuss some basic estimating, scheduling, and planning techniques.

Visual Studio Tools for Office: the Agony and the Ecstasy
Josh Holmes, SRT Solutions
Tuesday, January 31, 4:30 p.m. — Smart Client Live!
For years we’ve been told: “develop your applications to look like Office,” or “use Office as your front end.” And we’ve seen the demos make it all look so easy. But those demos fail to mention the difficulty of working with a COM-based object model. It gets even more interesting when you’re using complimentary managed objects that can’t be cast to a COM component with more functionality. And when you get around to deploying, you’ll run into issues with Code Access Security, application location—and even getting Office to recognize that location. If you suffer through all the agony and torture, having an application that integrates seamlessly and targets the users of Office in their natural environment is pure ecstasy. In this session, we’ll jump into the practical application of VSTO with deep integration into the Office object model, along with the difficulties in deploying real world applications.

Requirements Patterns with VSTS
Martin L. Shoemaker, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Tuesday, January 31, 5:45 p.m. — Smart Client Live!
Some projects use VB .NET, while others use C#, Managed C++, or may be a mix. Some projects are Web-based, while others ran on a desktop or in a console. But no matter how they may differ, all projects are the same in one regard: they all have requirements. And so requirements definition and management should be at the core of any good process. In this session, we’ll learn how VSTS helps you to define, store, track, and report requirements. And we’ll also learn some simple yet powerful requirements patterns that you can apply to most projects and processes.

Implementing .NET Object Mapping with Nhibernate
Benjamin Day, Benjamin Day Consulting
Wednesday, February 1, 10:30 a.m. — ASP Live!
The problem: our applications use objects, but our databases don’t. Why isn’t there an easy way for applications to use objects, but store their contents in a database with a minimum of effort required to transition between them? Enter NHibernate: an open-source, object-relational persistence framework that uses XML to map classes and properties (in your program) to tables and columns (in your database). Once you write the mappings, NHibernate can generate the database code and SQL necessary to save and retrieve your objects. In this session, Ben will discuss the fundamentals of using NHibernate in an ASP.NET web application, with applicability towards any scenario where objects should be transparently persisted.

Leveraging .NET 2.0 Security Features
Robert Hurlbut, Hurlbut Consulting
Wednesday, February 1, 11:45 a.m. — ASP Live!
Security is difficult to get right, and it is a good strategy to leverage code provided by the upcoming changes in .NET 2.0. The new security components in .NET 2.0 can help you greatly reduce the amount of code you need to write in order to make your applications secure. .NET 2.0 provides numerous additional types that encapsulate functionality already provided in the base Windows OS, as well as new functionality only available in .NET 2.0. This talk will cover the new improvements including public key cryptography, Windows security, remoting, SecureString, XML Encryption, ASP.NET and Code Access Security.

Best Practices for Writing ReUsable Managed Code
Deborah Kurata, InStep Technologies
Wednesday, February 1, 3:15 p.m. — Smart Client Live!
Visual Studio is marketed as the most productive development platform. Many people think of high productivity as the ability to write code faster, but writing code quickly may not always be your best option. More code; more code to maintain. This session covers how to write less code by writing reusable code. It will take a close look at defining types for longevity and on leveraging generics to improve reusability.

Exploring Enterprise Library and the Application Blocks
Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Wednesday, February 1, 4:30 p.m. — Smart Client Live!
While the .NET Framework considerably reduces the code you have to write to finish a job, there’s still plenty to be written. And some of it seems to be written again and again, unless you can find effective ways to abstract that code into re-usable libraries—and have the time to do so. Have you had to write (and re-write) your own custom configuration management libraries? What about cryptography code? Never found the time to implement factory patterns around your data access code, so can switch providers dynamically? Finding it a hassle to configure—and re-configure—security for each .NET application your write? Want an easy want to add Logging features to your applications and components? Or maybe you want to add caching to Smart Clients? These are all issues addressed by the Patterns and Practices Enterprise Library. In this session, Richard will present an overview of the Enterprise Library and how to get started with it

Increase Your Predictability of Success with Team System
Brian Randell, MCW Technologies
Thursday, February 2, 9 a.m. — Post-Conference Workshop
Creating good software solutions is hard. From design, to code cutting, testing, deployment and project management, a software project’s success requires effective team communication and tools the help, not hinder your process. In this workshop, you’ll learn how Visual Studio Team System can help you increase the predictability of success of your software projects. In this workshop you’ll quickly learn what Team System is all about—what you need to run it and what’s included “in-the-box”. Moving forward, you’ll dive deep and learn how to use the various components—SOA designers, Unit Testing, Work Item Tracking, enterprise source code control and Office integration--to build a software solution. You’ll also learn about security, process methodology templates, reporting and very important to most shops—how to customize Team System to work the way you work. At the end of the workshop, you’ll be ready to start your own projects with Team System.

Patterns and Practices in .NET Framework 2.0
Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Thursday, February 2, 9 a.m. — Post-Conference Workshop
The arrival of .NET Framework 2.0 brings with it a whole host of Best Practices and Patterns you should utilize and take advantage of: what classes and members should you use instead of those in .NET 1.x? How best to leverage Generics, Iterators and Nullable Types? And how does Enterprise Library change? In this tutorial, we’ll spend a day using VS2005 to build live code examples (which you’ll get a copy of, afterwards) to get answers.

We’ll start with Generics, how to apply them and how the Type class has been extended to detect and consume them. You’ll learn how to build Generic classes, methods interfaces and Delegates. We’ll delve into Generic Constraints and the classes and interfaces in System.Collections.Generic. We’ll also examine how to apply Generics to Serialization and Remoting. Finally, you’ll learn Best Practices—when you should and shouldn’t use Generics, and some do’s and don’ts for how to apply them.

Then we’ll turn to Iterators: we’ll learn how Iterators work, how to define them, when to have them return IEnumerator vs. IEnumerable (or their Generic counterparts), and how to use the new yield keyword. You’ll even learn how to use recursion to create truly powerful Iterator objects. After that, we’ll review a number of new C# 2.0 and Framework 2.0 features, including: Nullable Types, Anonymous Methods, Reference Aliases, Friend Assemblies, and other powerful Framework 2.0 features.

Last of all, we’ll examine Enterprise Library 2.0. We’ll look at how the Security Application Block has changed to work with .NET 2.0, how ConfigurationRuntime has been updated to reflect improvements in System.Configuration, and how the architecture of the Data Application Block changed due to ADO.NET 2.0.

By the end of the day, you’ll have a much deeper understanding of C# 2.0, Framework 2.0, Enterprise Library 2.0, and Patterns and Practices for leveraging them.

Pre-requisites: you must already have 1 year of C# development experience with VS.NET 2003 and .NET Framework 1.x: no hand-holding if you don’t. While .NET 2.0/C# 2.0 experience is not required, you may find it useful to bring a laptop with VS2005 pre-installed.

Richard Hale Shaw
Black-Belt Virtual Track Chair

Richard is the founder of the Richard Hale Shaw Group, which has consulted and trained software developers since 1993. He's created and chaired numerous technical conferences, including C# Live! and Black Belt tracks of the VSLive! conference series. An articulate writer and speaker on topics dear to the hearts of software developers and an outspoken critic of broken devtools, Richard specializes in consulting and training on .NET programming in C# and COM/+ programming in C++. You can reach him at www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com.