Bayer White, Connected Systems MVP - .Net Made Easy With WF

Paul Sheriff of PDSA gave a great session on building Web Parts with VS2005. Seems that most everything that Sharepoint offers with web parts, VS2005 makes even easier. VS2005 architecture for basic Web Part development flows like this…

• ASP.Net Web Page
  • Webpart Manger Control(Manages Web Parts)
    • Webpart Zone Control (These sit in Tables)
      • Webpart(Just drag and drop your controls or user-controls)
  • Editor Zone Control (allows customization of Web Parts)

Once I have had time to play, I will have more information posted on some realistic webpart examples. Also, there have been questions about web parts created in .Net 2.0 and how they will play with Sharepoint. I hear this will not be possible until Service Pack 2 for SharePoint. Check out Mike Fitzmaurice’s Blog. WSS will run .Net 2.0 Webparts but SPS will not even with SharePoint Service Pack 2.

I was wrong, Bill Baker passed out cool hats today. I thought he might do shirts like PASS but this time hats for SQL Server users since 1.0…

More importantly, Bill Baker of Microsoft brings Business Intelligence to VSLive by having Herain of Microsoft give some cool demos on building CLR User-defined Functions and debugging TSQL (“YES, debuggin TSQL”) within VS, showing off SSIS, Data Mining, and Reporting Services. I must say, the new Report Builder Tool that can load on user’s machines via “Click Once” is awesome. Users now have the power of formatting and building there on reports based on current reports and then loading them back to the RS Server. This is Big!!! Developers can then take these reports and embed them within web apps… Too Cool!!!

I wanted to get this out there yesterday, but I felt the need to hang with my wife and new daughter last night and therefore I am running a little late...

Yesterday BJ Holtgrewe of Microsoft started us off with some background info as to what considerations went into VSTS. Looks like architects, developers and "YES" testers and project managers have all been brought into the picture with VSTS. He also showed a dramatic cost comparison of $110K when bundling a number of addin services to VSTS when compared to some similar functionality services that IBM and "Other Java" technologies had to offer. Eric Lee of Microsoft then showed us how VSTS handles load testing, code testing, development tasks and bugs for development projects and how they are tracked within Foundation Server. Later in the day Erik showed how Project Pro could build project tasks that could then be saved in Foundation Server. My question is what role does Project Server play? Reading Microsoft’s Press, “VSTS”, it seems that Project Server is not in the loop.

Jay Schmelzer of Microsoft showed off how less code could be written in VS2005 when compared to VS2003. He built a windows blog reader with functionality of subscribing and reading RSS feeds. The new controls Jay used in VS2005 looked great (very “Outlookish”) and seemed extremely easy to wire up. He continued to show how easy it is now to use “Click Once” technology that compared to the simplicity of deploying ASP.Net applications. I tried this in VS2003 and it was a headache. Some say windows development is out the door because of web technology, but I would disagree after seeing “Click Once” and the ease it makes with deploying rich applications. Jay also demonstrated how refactoring is built in VS2005 when the IDE built a function automatically by identifying duplicated code.