Smart Client Live!
Session Outlines

Build a Smart Client Construction Kit
Billy Hollis, DotNetMasters
Too many smart clients are still written the way they were in classic Visual Basic, using lots of repetitious code for common tasks. The OO capabilities of .NET allow routine code to be packaged in reusable components, dramatically reducing code footprint and development time. This session demonstrates a set of components and blocks, all available in source code, for handling the routine aspects of smart client development and letting you concentrate on the business logic. Capabilities included in the “construction kit” include management and display of forms, data validation, security management, and dirty checking.

Smart Data Clients 2.0
Walt Ritscher, Scandiasoft
Working with data is a necessity for every business applications.ADO.NET 2.0 is chock full of improvements and the Windows Form team has been steadily improving the data-binding pieces. We’ll start this data tour by looking at the new drag-and-drop data-binding features of Visual Studio. We see how easy it is to bind to databases, business objects, and Web services. Next we’ll look at the enhanced data controls (DataContainer, GridView, DataConnector, DataNavigator). Each of these controls is completely new and loaded with lots of new enhancements. We’ll walk you through a detailed exploration of these new data controls including: UI look and behavior, data-binding support, improved validation and formatting features, and better Null binding. Last on the agenda is a tour of the SQLClient changes—asynchronous data and data paging.

Occasionally Connected Smart Clients
Steve Lasker, Microsoft
Many developers assume wireless will be everywhere enabling applications to communicate to centrally located servers regardless of where the user is. Any developer that has actually tried deploying connected applications knows that this is really just a dream of an alternate universe that simply frustrates users with reality. Users want their applications to just work and their data to be available even if the network isn’t. In this session we’ll cover the various options for developing Occasionally Connected Smart Clients that operate in an offline mode as well as online. Using the IssueVision Smart Client desktop reference application, we will demonstrate both how to detect offline mode and how to serialize data in this mode. Using Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey), we’ll cover how to use ClickOnce to deploy your smart client. We’ll cover and demonstrate synching technologies available using SQL Mobile for the Windows Mobile devices and merge replication available for SQL Express as well as SQL Mobile. Finally, we will look at using SOA in the form of WSE and Indigo to loosely-couple your synchronization logic in the smart client and reconciliation server. Empower your users with Smart Client Applications that work where the user is, not where the network may be.

Windows Forms Tricks and Tricks
Ken Getz, MCW Technologies
We’ll demonstrate several different techniques you can use when building Windows applications, including: creating owner-drawn controls, binding controls to just about anything, exposing protected information with inheritance, using Windows XP theming, modifying the DataGrid control, handling thread synchronization with Windows forms, and creating your own property grid. We’ll cover a lot of material, but the included samples (in both C# and VB.NET) will allow you to review the material once you’ve returned home.

Best Kept Secrets in Visual Studio and .NET
Deborah Kurata, InStep Technologies
There are many new features in VS 2005, some of which have gotten great publicity (like generics) while others have been left lurking in the shadows. This session will shed some light on these lesser-known features to help you make the most of .NET 2.0. Did you know you could set Application-level events? That there is now a true global error handler? There is better way to manage connection strings? That you can now automatically retain user’s settings? This session will cover these topics and much, much more.

Table Adapters 101
Paul Sheriff, PDSA, Inc.
The new TableAdapters in VS .NET 2005 are a great way to create type-safe access to your tables and promote good object reuse. In this seminar you will be given a great overview of how to use these new classes in your .NET 2.0 applications.

Visual Studio Tools for Office: the Agony and the Ecstasy
Josh Holmes, SRT Solutions
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.

Avalon: Vector Graphics Come Alive
Walt Ritscher, Scandiasoft
The next version of Windows (Longhorn) will include a completely new graphics engine. This engine, code named Avalon, will change the way you think about user interfaces. Also planned to be retro-fitted onto Windows XP and Windows 2003 Avalon is a major shift in Windows graphics platform. Built, in part, on a new vector API Avalon blends traditional two-dimensional and three-dimensional systems, transparencies, animation, integrated multi-media and more in a single unified managed code model. Join me to see how Avalon is controlled through XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) or via code. See how incredibly easy it is to create three dimensional applications (including controlling lights, camera and sprites). Examine the significant advances in color, printing, remoting, and audio processing that are included.   Immense changes are coming.   Be among the first to see what the Avalon engine can do.

Requirements Patterns with VSTS
Martin L. Shoemaker, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Some projects use VB .NET, while others use C#, Managed C++, or may be a mix. Some projects are Web-based, while others run 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.

Test-Driven Development
Keith Pleas, Guided Design
This session shows developers how to implement test-driven development and a continuous build process. You’ll learn how to integrate test code, effectively re-factor applications, and how to build quality and robustness into your applications by making them verifiable and reliable.

IM API (for MSN Messenger)
James Baker, Microsoft
This session covers the architecture and design of multi-person IM applications within MSN Messenger using the Messenger Activity API.  We show how to use the peer-to-peer capabilities of the Activity API to build multi-user IM applications that can send files, instant messages, data, and integrate with other services.  Build your IM applications to work with MSN Messenger, the world’s largest instant messaging service with more than 170 million customers worldwide.

Advancements in Data Access
Steve Lasker, Microsoft
ADO.NET 2.0, LINQ, XML, Typed Data Sets, Object Binding—there is a raft of new technologies for more powerful, more efficient data access. Hear the latest on data access from an expert at the Microsoft data group on the Visual Basic team.

Adding Reliability with Message Queuing
Russ Nemhauser, Nemhauser Media
Many applications are developed to handle multi-part tasks in series, often on a single thread of execution that is started by user interaction. This can often lead to problems and failures when user input is incomplete or incorrect, when a system is down, when a user cancels the process by shutting down, or many other reasons. In this session you’ll learn how to integrate MSMQ from scratch to transform an application to a message-based system that greatly improved flexibility, reliability, and user satisfaction. You’ll learn how to install and configure public and private queues, how to save and retrieve messages to and from a queue, and how to format messages properly based on the task at hand. You’ll also learn how to create a Windows Service to help ease performance bottlenecks.

Smart Data for Windows Forms
Rocky Lhotka, Magenic Technologies
Windows Forms 2.0 takes data binding to a new level. In this session you will learn how to leverage data binding to keep virtually all business logic out of the UI and in its own business layer. You will learn how to give intelligence to DataTable objects in ADO.NET 2.0 and how to create business objects following object-oriented design. In the end you’ll be able to choose between the DataSet and business object options to best meet the needs of your application.

Best Practices for Writing ReUsable Managed Code
Deborah Kurata, InStep Technologies
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.

Effective Data Caching
Brian Randell, MCW Technologies
Most applications, managed and unmanaged need data. Often this data is stored in relational databases, but it could be in XML files, Active Directory, or Web services. In this session you’ll learn effective techniques for data caching to increase performance and scalability. In addition, you’ll learn about cache coherency and maintenance issues.

Exploring Enterprise Library and the Application Blocks
Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
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 you can switch providers dynamically? Finding it a hassle to configure—and re-configure—security for each .NET application you write? Want an easy way 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

Asynchronous Data Operations
Bill Vaughn, Beta V Corp
The Asynchronous Ops session discuss how to deal with a number of “typical” problems that can be solved by asynchronous threads. I show how the Fill and Load only do half the work and how to implement BackgroundWorker threads to do the rest. We show what you can (and can’t) do in a spawned thread and how to check for completion in a number of ways.

VIRTUAL TRACKS
Black Belt
Visual Studio Team System